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Affordable HousingConference CoverageFeaturesSoutheast Feature Archive

InterFace Panel: Affordable Housing Deal Flow Gains Momentum as Brokers Turn Bullish

by Abby Cox

ATLANTA — For much of the past two years, affordable housing transactions in the Southeast moved at a measured pace, slowed by severe cost burdens on both renters and prospective buyers and widening supply deficits. But inside this year’s InterFace Affordable Housing Southeast show, a networking and information conference held at The Westin Buckhead Atlanta on May 12, the tone has shifted. Phones are ringing again, deals are re-entering the pipeline and investors are showing a renewed willingness to chase affordable housing opportunities 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. Rachel Chapman, national account executive of Stewart Title Guaranty Co., moderated the discussion, entitled “Brokers, Buyers and Capital.” The investment sales panel notably reverted to a subject and question that’s shaping much of today’s affordable housing market: with elevated borrowing costs and general economic uncertainty, why is transaction activity accelerating? Necessitating that question for developers and brokers are the thorns still present in the industry, such as the lengthy process of securing and pricing loans, interest rate volatility and capital markets shifts. Even with these headwinds, …

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Affordable HousingConference CoverageFeaturesMultifamilyMultifamily & Affordable Housing Feature ArchiveSoutheast Feature Archive

InterFace Panel: Architects Share Solutions to Affordable Housing Delivery Gaps 

by Kristin Harlow

Affordable housing developers are under pressure to deliver more units at a time when financing, approvals, construction pricing and long development timelines can easily slow projects down. At InterFace Affordable Housing Southeast, architects and construction leaders emphasized the importance of early collaboration among developers, designers, lenders and public-sector partners. They also explored how modular construction, mass timber, light-gauge steel framing and energy-efficient strategies are being used to control costs, shorten schedules and improve long-term operations. The panelists agreed that design decisions in affordable housing are increasingly tied to insurance costs, maintenance expenses and resident quality of life. The panel’s central message: affordable housing must pencil out financially, but it also must be built to best support all aspects of the communities it serves. Read the full story here.

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Conference CoverageFeaturesIndustrialNorth CarolinaSoutheastSoutheast Feature Archive

Utilities, Infrastructure Can Make or Break the Next Cycle of Industrial Development, Say InterFace Panelists

by John Nelson

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The U.S. industrial real estate sector has been on a long rebound from the supply wave following the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 2.5 billion square feet of industrial space was delivered between 2020 and 2025, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield. In the Southeast, deliveries were especially pronounced, most notably in the high-growth I-85 industrial corridor that spans from Montgomery, Ala., to south Richmond, Va. The 666-mile interstates traverses through Atlanta, Greenville-Spartanburg, Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad (Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem) and Raleigh-Durham. 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. Gregg Healy, executive vice president and head of industrial services at Savills, says that since the beginning of 2022, nearly 250 million square feet of industrial space has been delivered along the I-85 corridor, which has taken longer to be absorbed than anticipated. “We were oversupplied, not just in the I-85 corridor, but nationally, because of the post-COVID boom when everyone was developing,” says Healy. “But vacancy rates did drop in the first quarter of 2026 for the first time in three …

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Conference CoverageIndustrialMarket ReportsTexasTexas Market Reports

InterFace Panel: Oversupply in Austin Industrial Market Is Real, But Complicated

by Taylor Williams

AUSTIN, TEXAS — By any objective, outside-looking-in metric, the Austin industrial market is currently overbuilt, but brokers who are on the inside looking out say that the narrative is more nuanced than the numbers suggest.  According to CBRE’s fourth-quarter 2025 market report, the marketwide vacancy rate was 20.4 percent at the end of last year, which represented a 10.9 percent increase from the third quarter of 2025. Approximately 3.4 million square feet of new space was delivered in the fourth quarter as part of 9.5 million square feet of new construction that came on line year-to-date, per CBRE, while fourth-quarter net absorption was less than 500,000 square feet. Qualitatively, the report concluded that the year-end vacancy rate was “an all-time high,” while 2025 was “one of the busiest years for development in market history.” The Austin industrial market has traditionally differed from those of its sprawling Texas counterparts — Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Houston — which have seen numerous massive projects built and absorbed over the past decade. Industrial deals and projects in the state capital have historically trended smaller, though that has changed somewhat in recent years as two tech giants — Tesla and Samsung — have planted massive …

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Conference CoverageMarket ReportsRetailTexasTexas Market Reports

InterFace Panel: Future-Oriented, Suburban Strategies Needed to Crack Austin Retail Market

by Taylor Williams

By Taylor Williams AUSTIN, TEXAS — A successful real estate strategy for both developers and operators looking to penetrate Austin’s airtight retail market must involve both a long-term growth plan and a site selection process that primarily targets suburban areas. Austin’s sizzling pace of population growth has slowed in the past year or two, but the state capital remains highly undersupplied in terms of housing. Land and other development costs have become frightfully expensive within the urban core, and like other Texas markets, Austin is emerging from a multifamily building boom within its urban core and first-ring suburbs. In addition, vacant, quality retail space within those areas of Austin is a rare commodity. Earlier this year, the Austin-American Statesman, citing data from Weitzman, reported that Austin had a marketwide retail vacancy rate of just 3 percent at the end of 2025. And according to a first-quarter 2025 report from Partners Real Estate, Austin’s retail occupancy rate has not dipped below 95 percent at any point in the past decade. 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. As such, …

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Affordable HousingConference CoverageDevelopmentFeaturesMultifamily

InterFace Panel: Early Planning, Collaboration Are Crucial to Affordable Housing Development

by Taylor Williams

By Taylor Williams DALLAS — Costs are always a sensitive subject in all types of residential and commercial development. But with projects that draw heavily on alternative and public-sector sources of financing to pencil out — namely affordable housing — the margin for error on cost overruns is even tighter. That’s a very unfortunate reality for developers working to mitigate America’s profound shortage of both affordable housing and housing that’s affordable. But with measured, deliberate upfront planning and collaboration between architects, engineers and general contractors, some of that risk can be mitigated. 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. To keep these critical developments on time and on budget, these project partners have had to not only adjust some of their traditional forms of value engineering (VE) — the term given to the collective effort of cost minimization and utility maximization over the course of a project — but also embrace completely new ones. The framework for trying new types of VE hinges on the notion that the whole of the project is greater than the sum of the …

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Conference CoverageFeaturesGeorgiaLoansMultifamilyMultifamily & Affordable Housing Feature ArchiveSoutheastSoutheast Feature Archive

InterFace: Multifamily Finance Pros Explain Where Capital Providers Are Placing Their Bets in 2026

by John Nelson

ATLANTA — Multifamily borrowers have a plethora of financing options at their beck and call, both from traditional debt sources and alternative platforms. With the competition among capital sources on the rise, sponsors are in an advantageous position. “More lenders are chasing multifamily since they’ve taken three commercial real estate food groups off the table — office, retail and hospitality,” explains Shawn Townsend, president and chief investment officer at Ease Capital. However, financing challenges remain. “But by and large the cost of debt capital has not gone down,” Townsend adds. 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. Townsend’s comments came during the capital markets panel at InterFace Multifamily Southeast, a two-day event held Dec. 1-2 at the Intercontinental Buckhead hotel in Atlanta. InterFace Conference Group and sister publications Multifamily & Affordable Housing Business and Southeast Real Estate Business hosted the networking and information conference. Stephen Farnsworth, senior managing director of real estate finance at Walker & Dunlop, moderated the session, which featured five lenders and financial intermediaries. Farnsworth opened by touching on the ebbs and …

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Conference CoverageFeaturesMultifamilySoutheast Feature Archive

InterFace Panel: Tariffs Are a ‘Hot Potato’ When it Comes to Construction Costs

by Kristin Harlow

ATLANTA — In today’s multifamily development world, architects, designers and general contractors do everything in their power to avoid the one thing they dread most — going back to a developer mid-project to ask for more money. These “uncomfortable moments,” as Lori Ann Dinkins, president and CEO of Mood Interior Design, called them, happen more often these days thanks to rising costs, tariffs and collaboration snafus. Dinkins led a panel of architects, interior designers and general contractors through a bevy of topics — good, bad and ugly — that define the current state of building and designing apartments at InterFace Conference Group’s Multifamily Southeast event. The event took place over the course of two days at the InterContinental Buckhead in Atlanta. 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. Residents and developers alike are taking a more practical, less playful approach when it comes to stylizing apartments. Gone are the days of “those huge show-stopper, Instagram-moment amenity spaces,” said Ian Hunter, regional director at Atlanta-based Dwell Design Studio. “They’re out. And they’re out for a couple of reasons. Not …

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Conference CoverageFeaturesMultifamily

InterFace Panel: Oversupply, Costs Remain Key Obstacles to Underwriting, Financing New Multifamily Projects

by Taylor Williams

ATLANTA — Jason Nettles, managing director at Northmarq’s Atlanta office, is well-versed on the recent history of U.S. apartment deliveries, knowledge that came in handy for launching discussion among developers at the 16th annual InterFace Multifamily Southeast conference. Nettles moderated a panel of five regional developers, all of whom also share keen awareness of just how much new multifamily product U.S. markets — particularly those in the highly desirable Sun Belt regions — have added in recent years. In these areas, supply growth is both a dominant narrative on the surface of the multifamily development scene and an invisible hand that guides business decisions behind that scene. Massive blips in supply, whether positive or negative, impact key facets of underwriting, including rent growth assumptions and concessions, as well as financing terms on both the debt and equity sides of the capital markets. Those figures and assumptions must then be evaluated against hard costs of development, which as a rule do not decline over time, but rather grow at varying paces. 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. All …

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Conference CoverageFeaturesMultifamily

InterFace Panel: AI Has Infiltrated Multifamily Management Without Compromising Human Touch

by Taylor Williams

By Taylor Williams DALLAS — Technological innovation has long been a cornerstone of managing and leasing multifamily properties, and that feature of the business has only been augmented in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). But for all the operational conveniences and efficiencies that AI potentially brings to the table, multifamily management has not yet reached the point of phasing out the human element. Almost immediately after the members of the leasing and management panel at the annual InterFace Multifamily Texas conference had introduced themselves, this fundamental premise of multifamily management was put forth to a crowd of several hundred real estate professionals — men and women who have built careers based on human relationships. The message to those at the conference, which took place in late September at the Westin Galleria Hotel in Dallas, seemed to be one of reassurance, that even as AI seemingly infiltrates every aspect of human life and threatens to void millions of jobs, the human principles that have long governed real estate transactions remain intact. At least for now. 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 …

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