Apartment Investment Loan Rates Remain in 4.6-4.7% Range As Spread To Treasury 10yr Holds

The apartment building loan rate we track came in today at 4.765% (see below for loan details), making it 22 straight weeks below the five percent mark. The spread to the 10 year Treasury (T10) also remained in the 2.1 and change range where it’s been since the beginning of March, indicating that the very competitive market for multifamily loans continues on.

For the gold plated ULI less than 60% LTV loan the spread dropped into the 1.2s from the 1.3 range where it had been holding since late February, taking the implied rate for these core institutional apartment loans down to 3.77%.

10 Year Treasury versus Apartment Building Investment Loan Rate

Speaking of the spread between the T10 and the Continue reading Apartment Investment Loan Rates Remain in 4.6-4.7% Range As Spread To Treasury 10yr Holds

10yr Treasury back in 2.6% range bringing apartment loan rates up. The spread also widened but remained below 2013 average.

Quick update: The 10 year Treasury (T10) climbed back up into the 2.60% range while the 10 year fixed apartment building loan we track moved up to 5.033%. The spread between them widened to 242bp but remains below the 2013 average of 265bp. This week we’ve added the darker green line to show the average spread between the T10 and the apartment rate on the chart. Note that it uses the Right Hand Scale along with the spread itself:

10 year Treasury rate vs 10 year fixed apartment building investment loan July 2013
10yr Treasury Rate via St. Louis Fed’s FRED data, contact us about the apartment loan rate and details: www.ashworthpartners.com

For details on the apartment loan we track see the notes in last week’s post here: Apartment Building Loan Rates Fall as Spreads Narrow.

How the St. Louis Fed calculates the 10 year Treasury rate displayed above: “Treasury Yield Curve Rates. These rates are Continue reading 10yr Treasury back in 2.6% range bringing apartment loan rates up. The spread also widened but remained below 2013 average.

Apartment Building Loan Rates Fall as Spreads Narrow

Back on June 24th I wrote a post Analysis on Tapering QE3 talking about how traders fears about the end of the Fed’s money printing spree made the interest rate on the 10 year Treasury jump. And as I mentioned in a follow up post Update on the 10yr Treasury rate we care about the 10yr Treasury (or T10) because it’s the benchmark most lenders base long term loan rates on. But there is one more component of apartment loan rates (and lending rates in general) that I want to draw your attention to. First an updated chart:

Treasury Rates and Apartment Building Loans

I’ve updated the chart with the latest rates and also added the rate for an apartment loan with a fixed rate for 10 years from one of our lenders (details on the loan terms below). The other thing I added was the spread, or difference, between the two rates (on the Right Hand Scale).  So far in 2013 the spread has averaged 2.65% or 265 basis points (bp) but it’s not a fixed amount that the lender adds to the T10. You can see that back in the beginning of May when the Treasury rate got as low as 1.66% the spread widened to 280bp because the loan rate was left at 4.5%. Then the spread narrowed back towards the average even while interest rates went up from there.

Then the Fed meeting notes came out in the middle of June and the T10 shot up but we got a double dose because the spread jumped up too. The Treasury went from 2.19% on the 17th to 2.57% on the 24th, and the spread jumped from 262pb to 283. It makes sense that in the uncertainty of a sudden rise in rates that lenders would widen their spreads to create a little breathing room but since then things have gotten quite interesting… in a good way. The good news is that since then the spread has Continue reading Apartment Building Loan Rates Fall as Spreads Narrow

Analysis on Tapering QE3 by Bill McBride- Not until December but #Multifamily rates jumped 45bp anyway

Bill McBride over at Calculated Risk stares at this stuff all day and has a pretty good track record reading the Fed’s tea leaves. He believes that actual ‘tapering’ of QE3 purchases most likely won’t start before December although there is a slight possibility that it could happen in September if…..

  • 3rd Qtr. GDP rose enough to make 2013 growth look like it will hit the low to mid 2% range.
  • Unemployment would have to dip enough to make it likely to get down to 7.2%-ish by year end.
  • Inflation has to be increasing. Currently the trend is in the wrong direction and Q1 produced only .3% which is well below the 2% annual the Fed Wants.

See Bill’s analysis here: Analysis on Tapering QE3 I highly recommend following Bill’s blog and this is just one of several posts in the last week on Fed comments around the end of tapering. Here’s the inflation chart he posted last week showing four different measures of inflation, note the trend since the beginning of the year:

US inflation measures 1990 to May 2013
Click on image to go to Calculated Risk article with chart.

Of course none of the Fed’s comments were interpreted this way by bond traders, what they heard was: It’s the end of the Continue reading Analysis on Tapering QE3 by Bill McBride- Not until December but #Multifamily rates jumped 45bp anyway

What do I do with my retirement money, one investor’s answer (with charts). Think apartment building investment-

Good charts on long term returns in this piece from Glenn R Mueller, PhD.:

I recently met with my financial advisor to “rebalance” my … retirement portfolio. Based on my “age and stage of life” his allocation model showed a 50% bond allocation. I laughed and asked him if the company allocation model assumed interest rates would rise over the next 10 years? His answer was “yes- of course.” I showed him the graph below which shows lower than average TOTAL returns in a rising interest rate environment and he checked his long-term data and found that bond holders between 1953 and 1980 had actually lost money. We all know that as interest rates rise, bond values decline and thus the total return can be small or negative. Not to mention that a 10-year treasury at 1.5% is below expected inflation and thus a NEGATIVE REAL RETURN. He agreed that a bond allocation did not make much sense, but since my investor profile was conservative what was the alternative?

Apartment building investments outperform bonds in rising interest rate environments

Dr. Mueller is Continue reading What do I do with my retirement money, one investor’s answer (with charts). Think apartment building investment-

Research shows that Apartment Building and CRE cap rate spreads shouldn’t be modeled as constant

From Serguei Chervachidze, Capital Markets Economist at CBRE Econometrics: “What’s the long-term spread between cap rates and Treasurys?” This question, with a few variations, comes from all types of clients—from small investment shops to large hedge funds staffed with many quants.

Apartment Building & CRE historical cap rate spreads to 10yr T-Bond Yields

This is the wrong question to be asking, however, in that it assumes Continue reading Research shows that Apartment Building and CRE cap rate spreads shouldn’t be modeled as constant