ATLANTA — A lot can happen in a year. This time a year ago, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.489 percent, the federal funds rate was at a range of 0 to 0.25 percent and SOFR was at 0.05 percent. As of this writing, those three benchmark interest rates are at 3.527 percent, 3.75 to 4 percent and 3.82 percent, respectively — none of which are within 200 basis points from a year ago. Debt capital has become decisively more expensive, and officials at the Federal Reserve are signaling that more rate hikes are coming. For the U.S. multifamily sector, the result is that investors are increasingly becoming “pencils down” until interest rates find their footing. “We haven’t had much [investment] sales volume, as you can imagine, in the third or fourth quarter,” said Bennett Sands, managing development director at Wood Partners, an Atlanta-based apartment developer. “Looking ahead, our sales volume in 2023 will be down 50 percent [from 2022], if we’re lucky.” “It has been pretty quiet the past few months, and we expect that to continue for the next few months as well,” added Andrew Zelman, vice president of acquisitions at GID, a multifamily and mixed-use developer …
