2/3rds of those are located in downtown, Capital Hill and Ballard. Owners of existing properties in those areas are about to have a bunch of new competition. With rent growth slowing to just about the national average what does that say about where we are in the apartment building investment cycle?
Click on the image to see the MPF Research video
M&M tracks 40 metro apartment investment markets and delivers quarterly reports on occupancy, rents, absorption, new construction and permits (See list below). You may have to register with them to access the reports.
If you have questions about a specific market Continue reading Q2 Local Metro Apartment Building Investment Reports Now Posted.
Apartments are a little easier to come by in the Portland area, but that’s not slowing down rent increases across much of the market.
According to the Metro Multifamily Housing Association which released its latest survey Wednesday:
The Portland area has one of the lowest Continue reading Portland Apartment Building Market: occupancy drops but rents still rising according to report
Seattle Apartment Building Investment update video Translation: We would never overbuild or get started too late in the apartment building investment cycle 😉
Interesting peek at multifamily in Toronto and Vancouver, worth a read to see how many rationalizations you recognize (or have uttered yourself). Nice quote: “If builders stopped building today, there’s five years worth of supply that is about to be delivered, relative to what normal population growth is.” Sound familiar? They’re even starting to do NINJA liar’s loans.
Toronto home and condo prices are amazingly high, the average price for a detached home C$543,993; for condos it’s ‘only’ C$343,835. In Vancouver the Continue reading Canadian Multifamily Bubble? Sadly the US can watch from hindsight.
Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) — Construction of multifamily units will lead the U.S. building industry again this year, allowing housing to contribute to growth for the first time in seven years, according to economists Michelle Meyer and Celia Chen.
Work will begin on about 260k apartment buildings and townhouse developments in 2012, up 45% from last year and the most since ’08, according to Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. Chen, an economist at Moody’s projects a record 74% jump to 310k.
Homeownership rates, which have declined to the lowest levels since ’98, may keep dropping as the foreclosure crisis turns more Americans into renters. In addition, household formation will probably accelerate as an improving economy and growing employment embolden more people to stop sharing residences and strike out on their own.
“Given the ongoing shift from owning to renting, there is increasing demand for multifamily construction,” Meyer said in an interview. See the whole Bloomberg piece here: Foreclosures are transitioning people out of ownership
From WSJ Developments-
Little new apartment construction and surging demand has created a shortfall of 2.5 million units, the largest the nation has seen in more than a half-century, according to research from Nareit, a trade group for real-estate investment trusts.
As we’ve reported, apartment landlords are seeing vacancy rates decline as more Americans rent by choice or necessity. In the fourth quarter, apartment vacancy fell to the lowest rate since late 2001, with the national rate dropping to 5.2% from 6.6% a year earlier, according to Reis Inc. The vacancy rate had risen as high as 8% in 2009.
Pent-up demand could pull that rate even lower. According to Nareit, the normal rate of household formation is about 1.2% annually. But, with the sour economy in the last four years, the rate plunged to about 0.5%, as people delayed moving out and opted to live with roommates and parents longer. This has created an unmet demand of about 2 million households, “about three times what it has been in previous business cycles,”… See the whole article here
