By Taylor Williams ATLANTA — There is nothing wrong with the new interest rate environment that currently governs capital markets activity in commercial real estate, and borrowers just need to adjust their expectations, put them into historical context and get back to making deals. This is the view of at least a couple veteran lenders who spoke at the InterFace Multifamily Southeast conference on Dec. 4 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta. The event is now in its 15th year and continues to attract hundreds of multifamily developers, investors and lenders from across the region. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Following two cuts totaling 75 basis points earlier this year, the target range for the federal funds rate, or the overnight interest rate at which banks lend to each other, currently sits at 4.5 to 4.75 percent. This year’s cuts marked the first monetary easing by the Federal Reserve in more than four years, and while at least a couple more slashes to the overnight rate are anticipated in the coming months, …
Conference Coverage
Stars Are Aligned for Healthy Seniors Housing Investment Climate in 2025, Says InterFace Panel
by John Nelson
The investment market for seniors housing is in a favorable position heading into the new year thanks to a confluence of factors, says Scott Corbin, director at Boston-based AEW Capital Management. The firm has roughly $3 billion in assets under management within this niche property type. “We’ve seen a full rebound in recovery. We’re not necessarily back to pre-pandemic [profit] margins, but we are getting close. We are seeing outsized NOI growth and outsized rent growth when you compare it to other asset classes. We have the demographic tailwinds. In addition, you have muted supply [growth],” explained Corbin, a panelist at the InterFace Seniors Housing Northeast conference, which took place Dec. 4-5 in Philadelphia. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Joining Corbin on stage at Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia were moderator Kory Buzin, director, Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors; and panelists Curtis King, executive vice president, HJ Sims; Dennis Murphy, chief investment officer, Priority Life Care; Rick Swartz, senior managing director, JLL; and Shani Walter, managing director, Omega Healthcare Investors. The daylong conference, …
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InterFace: Multifamily Investors Are Bullish on 2025 Sales Market, Though Many Hurdles Will Carry Over into New Year
by John Nelson
Speakers on the investment sales panel at the annual InterFace Multifamily Southeast conference were overall bullish on the sector’s investment prospects in the new year. The event, now in its 15th year, was held on Wednesday, Dec. 4 at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta. To kick off the panel, moderator Paul Berry, president and COO of Mesa Capital Partners, discussed what a recovery could look like in terms of investment sales volume. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Berry said that in the six years leading up to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, annual U.S. multifamily investment sales volume hovered between $155 billion to $195 billion per year. He noted that due to robust inventory growth during that time, a “normal” yearly sales total would average out to $180 billion to $190 billion. “2021 saw ‘double normal’ — it was $350.7 billion,” said Berry. “The first three quarters of 2022 were at that same level before it slowed down by the end of the year, but it still eclipsed $300 billion.” He …
By Taylor Williams The concept of cap rates is an interesting phenomenon when you stop to think about it. Short for “capitalization rate” and calculated as net operating income (NOI) divided by sales price, this all-important real estate metric represents a page borrowed from Wall Street’s playbook, a savvy maneuver by investors to create a vehicle of asset valuation and apply it to select securities on a widespread basis. The circumstances of the metric’s inception are largely unknown, but all that matters is that the real estate industry has successfully propagated the use of cap rates as a crucial mechanism to underwriting and pricing transactions for these assets. And the most basic thing to know is that to a point, sellers like low cap rates because they reflect high purchase prices, and buyers prefer high cap rates for the opposite reason. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Yet for all their ubiquity, cap rates are fluid, representing snapshots of valuations at random points in time. Tenants move out, leaving spaces vacant, and a property’s …
By Taylor Williams AUSTIN, TEXAS — Sources of institutional capital are slowly trickling back into buyer pools of deals for multifamily properties in Austin, a move that marks an inflection point within the sector as a whole and speaks to investors’ long-term faith in that market’s fundamentals. And faith is perhaps just what the doctor ordered. In some ways, Austin has become a victim of its own success over the past decade, a sort of cautionary tale of growth gone too heavy too fast. The feverish attempts of multifamily developers to keep pace with demand during that time have come to a head, and the market now languishes in a state of oversupply. With rents softening and interest rates only just now showing concrete signs of decreasing, institutional capital has been more than content to sit on the sidelines of this market for the past 18 or so months. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. But that is starting to change, at least according to a panel of multifamily investment sales professionals who spoke …
By Taylor Williams In the eyes of some commercial brokers, especially those who represent tenants, there actually is such a thing as too little vacancy. When markets are running super-hot, meaning demand is far outstripping supply, tenants have minimal options and often end up paying premiums just to be able to secure space. That’s great for landlords — to a point — because markets can only bear so much rent growth in so much time before tenants start looking for workarounds to physical occupancy. Enter the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) industrial sector, which has been on fire for the past seven-plus years. Explosive volumes of new deliveries, frenetic paces of absorption, stiff competition for space, record levels of rent growth and a national coming-out party as an undeniable Tier 1 market have all been hallmarks of this activity. But such torrid paces of growth were never really sustainable in perpetuity, and although both the supply and demand sides of the market have cooled, the slowdown in some ways reflects a return to healthier dynamics. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements …
By Channing Hamilton ATLANTA — Investment markets have been tumultuous over the past year, with high interest rates and inflation impacting the flow of debt and equity across the commercial real estate industry. Last year, many investors and brokers chose to weather the storm and try to make it to 2025, when it was estimated that interest rates would begin to moderate. Recently, however, conditions seem to be improving in the seniors housing sector, where many investors are leaving behind the “survive till 2025” strategy that defined 2023. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. “The relative positioning of seniors housing compared with other real estate asset classes has improved dramatically since last year,” said Blake Peeper, senior managing director of Bridge Investment Group, which is based in Salt Lake City. Peeper attributed his optimism in the seniors housing sector to a variety of factors. “Supply and demand dynamics are in our favor,” he explained. “There’s been a lot of confidence in future net operating income (NOI) growth, and the bid-ask spread has really narrowed. All of that …
By Taylor Williams ATLANTA — Seniors housing has long been established as a viable property type within the spectrum of commercial real estate investment, and at the institutional level, major seniors housing owners oftentimes happen to be major healthcare owners as well. The pairing is only logical. Seniors tend to require disproportionate amounts of healthcare resources, which is why ideal sites for their residential facilities tend to have proximity to hospitals. It also explains why the staffers who make these facilities run often have medical training backgrounds. Therefore, to continue to evolve as an asset class and investment proposition, it follows that seniors housing owners must, from top to bottom, deepen their embrace of healthcare technologies and operating philosophies within their properties. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. At the InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast conference in Atlanta in late August, several panelists representing prominent owner-operators encouraged a crowd of 400-plus attendees at the Westin Buckhead Hotel to do just that. Incorporating both tangible and intangible features of pure-play healthcare properties and operations reflects an …
Technology Can Complement — But Never Replace — The Human Touch in Seniors Housing Communities, Say InterFace Panelists
by John Nelson
ATLANTA — Though the older population is often seen as removed from modern technology, tech products offer great promise to the seniors housing sector. Participants in the “Technology Revolution: Enhancing Resident Care and Operational Cost Effectiveness” panel at the InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast conference (held recently in Atlanta) all agreed on this point. Importantly though, the panel — which was moderated by Mark Petty, vice president of corporate accounts with ICON — also highlighted the fact that seniors housing is an industry rooted in human interaction. Given this fact, the panelists concluded that technology can complement and enhance, but never replace, the human touch. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. Three Questions A strategic approach in the purchase and application of technology within seniors housing communities is paramount, pointed out Joe Jasmon, CEO and managing partner of American Healthcare Management Group. In addition to being highly helpful, the products offered by tech companies can be costly. “To have tech just to have tech is really a waste of time, effort and money,” asserted Jasmon. …
By Taylor Williams DALLAS — It’s an exceptionally challenging time to be developing retail space in the metroplex. Pick your poison: Interest rates that have tripled in two years, restricted proceeds from lenders, longer entitlement and permitting times, limited land for new projects. Between all these barriers to growth, the deck is seemingly stacked against brick-and-mortar retail developers these days, despite the fact that in Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), occupancy is very high and population growth shows little sign of slowing. Of course, each of those factors is exacerbated with large-scale developments. More land and rentable square footage require the raising of more debt and equity, which translates to heftier interest and dividend payments, respectively. If the site is an assemblage, then predevelopment is more time-consuming, and with the push outward to new suburban paths of growth, those sites may not already be zoned for retail. If rents aren’t trending upward, those factors alone can kill a project in its infancy. Editor’s note: InterFace Conference Group, a division of France Media Inc., produces networking and educational conferences for commercial real estate executives. To sign up for email announcements about specific events, visit www.interfaceconferencegroup.com/subscribe. For all these reasons, some owner-operators see opportunity in building smaller …
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