Will REO-rentals Really Compete With Apartment Building Investments?

Greg Willett, VP of research over at Real Page wrote a nice piece on that which covers it nicely; take it away Greg:

Will REO rentals compete with Apartment Building Investments?

Thanks to one sentence uttered by Warren Buffett and some major overplay by the media, single-family rentals are a hot investment choice now.  Thus, the analysts at MPF Research are fielding a constant stream of inquiries about whether the bulk sale of bank-owned single-family homes to investors who will operate them as rentals will impact the apartment sector.

Our take is that Continue reading Will REO-rentals Really Compete With Apartment Building Investments?

Handy Apartment Building Investment Market Reports- interactive one-pagers from Reis Reports.

Reis puts out these really handy one page reports with all the major QoQ changes broken out by sub-market. Here’s the latest on Portland, OR:

Apartment Builiding Investment Metro Reports by Reis Reports

Click on the image above to go to a list of  markets then select Continue reading Handy Apartment Building Investment Market Reports- interactive one-pagers from Reis Reports.

Portland OR Q1 Apartment Building Investments Now Posted.

Here are some interesting transaction statistics for 1st Quarter apartment building investment transactions:

  • Average price per unit was up 11% from Q1 2011
  • 6.86% was the average cap rate, vs. 7.07% in 2011
  • 77% of properties sold had between 5-50 units

Click on the image to see the list of Q1 apartment building investment sales in Portland:

Portland Apartment Building Investment Sales Q1

For more on PDX apartment building investment see City Rents Rise As Buyers Wait Out Housing Bust from Joseph Bernard Investment Real Estate.

 

Why now is the right time for CRE and Apartment Building Investment. Video via Tom Barrack at Colony Capital

Tom is one of my mentors and I follow what he’s doing closely to learn from a pro in apartment building investing. Here’s a video 3fer with Tom on why now is the time, if you have any contrarian testosterone as he puts it (in other words you are a true value investor). See also my notes below with the exec sum in bold.

1st Video:

Tom Barrack on Commercial Real Estate and Apartment Building Investment

Tom Barrack on CNBC last week

Stock markets rise and fall, but investors with a long-term view will make money, real estate investor Tom Barrack of Colony Capital is a “slow money guy”.  Barrack has $27 billion invested in real estate and $45 billion in assets around the world.

Overall in the US

Where I think we are is actually a great Continue reading Why now is the right time for CRE and Apartment Building Investment. Video via Tom Barrack at Colony Capital

Now you can watch the Apartment Building Investing Cycle Unfold In Real Time- Much easier than deciphering technical stock charts!

Successful apartment building investing is about knowing where and when to buy and when to sell. The apartment building investment cycle sends very clear signals to those paying attention and one of the biggest and clearest is when existing properties begin to sell for more than the cost of building new apartments. As I mentioned here this line was crossed about a year ago in the Seattle market and now we can see how the peak is formed, when every developer and their brother starts building new apartments.

From Bloomberg:

The biggest surge of Seattle-area apartment construction in a quarter century is threatening to undercut the growth in rents. Seattle went from “dead last” in rent increases three years ago to 13th out of 88 markets last year. “We went from almost a desert to a big pipeline” in two years, said David Young, the Seattle-based managing director who oversees western U.S. apartments for commercial broker Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.

Apartment building investment in Seattle

Encouraged by hiring at local employers such as Amazon.com, Boeing and Nordstrom, developers are building almost 10,000 apartments in Washington state’s King and Snohomish counties,  Three- quarters of the total are in Seattle, with 4,619 of those units in or near downtown.

Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors Inc. said the building boom may last through 2016.

If in fact we come to market when there’s excess supply, we’ll just have to be aggressive on rents,” said Continue reading Now you can watch the Apartment Building Investing Cycle Unfold In Real Time- Much easier than deciphering technical stock charts!

Apartment Building Investment In Seattle, here’s the good news- video

Seattle Apartment Building Investment update video Translation: We would never overbuild or get started too late in the apartment building investment cycle 😉

Is the Dallas/Fort Worth Apartment Building Investment Cycle Peaking or just taking a breather?

In their RECON report The  Real Estate Center @ Texas A&M quotes The Dallas Morning News on apartment building investment in the DFW market:

“Apartment leasing in Dallas-Fort Worth dipped for the first time in over two years.

Net leases fell by 270 during first quarter 2012, with most of the declines occurring in the northern suburbs.

Apartment Building Invesment Cycle peaking in Dallas?

Greg Willett of apartment analyst MPF Research believes the slight dip is nothing to worry about.

“I don’t think one quarter of slight resident loss should be viewed as a big deal, especially when demand in first quarter usually is pretty mild anyway,” he said. “The job numbers still look good, and a comeback for the for-sale housing sector actually could drive them higher.”

The North Texas area has added about Continue reading Is the Dallas/Fort Worth Apartment Building Investment Cycle Peaking or just taking a breather?

National Apartment Building Vacancy Plummets, Defies Fourth-Quarter Seasonal Slowdown says report.

Marcus & Millichap’s latest report on Apartment Building Investment called “The Outlook” is just out today. In it they cover the usual national multifamily trends; rents up, vacancy down, economy slowly recovering, jobs growing but could be better. Then they take it a little deeper with these points (bel0w) then flesh it all out with charts demonstrating that things are really picking up for apartment building investors.

Here’s the exec sum:

  • Expanding Production Capacity Signals Stronger Job Creation.
  • Sustained employment growth underscores traction in the economy.
  • Apartment demand surges, completions sink to new lows, and a sweeping recovery matures into an expansion cycle.
  • Vacancy rates tighten across markets and asset classes, moving the sector into expansion.
  • Foreclosed homes and government-sponsored REO-to-Rental program offer rental alternatives to apartments.
  • Cap rate arbitrage and stabilizing operations create a compelling investment thesis for opportunistic and value-add strategies.
  • Stronger job growth and household formation will provide a steady source of new entrants to the multifamily rental market. Continue reading National Apartment Building Vacancy Plummets, Defies Fourth-Quarter Seasonal Slowdown says report.