Acquisitions

By Colin Grayson, Lument If you consider multifamily real estate assets to be a good investment, you are in good company. At mid-year, asset managers and private equity firms alone held an estimated $325 billion of levered dry powder set aside for this purpose, enough cash to finance nearly every acquisition closed in the United States in 2021, the highest investment sales volume on record. Despite nearly unanimous support for the asset class, however, multifamily transaction volume in the third quarter slumped year-over-year for the first time since the peak of the pandemic. The mainspring was a sharp rise in mortgage financing costs triggered by high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s commitment to raising rates to bring it under control. Generic rates for 65 percent loan-to-value (LTV) first mortgage debt stood on 5.71 percent at the end of November, representing an increase of 248 basis points since the beginning of the year. Even as financing costs soared, asset pricing changed very little. Initial net cash flow yields of transactions closed in the third quarter of 2022 averaged only 4.6 percent, according to Real Capital Analytics, an increase of 10 basis points from second-quarter 2022 levels. At the same time, cap …