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RED Capital Orlando Multifamily Rent and Occupancy Forecast
Content PartnerFeaturesFloridaLumentMultifamilyRED Capital GroupSoutheast

Orlando Multifamily Could Suffer Multiyear COVID-19 Recession Contraction

by Sarah Daniels

Since the end of the Great Recession, Orlando has been among the country’s fastest-growing economies and strongest multifamily markets. After 2014, metro payroll employment increased at a 3.7 percent compound annual rate, 120 percent faster than the national average. Only Austin surpassed Orlando for payroll growth among the peer group of 50 large metropolitan markets, according to The RED 50, a proprietary econometric model developed by RED Capital Research. Personal income grew about 6.8 percent annually, 45 percent faster than the national average. Apropos of the apartment sector, effective rents advanced at a 5.9 percent annual rate, according to Reis data, surpassed only by Atlanta (6.9 percent), Dallas (6.0 percent) and Nashville (6.2 percent) among growth markets — and not by much. All the while, the sources of Orlando’s prosperity grew more diverse and its labor force more highly skilled. In the past five years, the fastest growing segments of the metro economy were professional, technical and scientific services, air transportation, manufacturing and construction. Indeed, employment growth in the sectors most popularly associated with Orlando — arts and entertainment plus food services and lodging — was outpaced by the finance and insurance industry. Nonetheless, theme parks, resort hotels, leisure service and …

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Nashville Rent & Occupancy Forecast Under COVID-19, RED Capital
Content PartnerFeaturesLumentMultifamilyRED Capital GroupSoutheastTennessee

Multifamily Sector in Music City Hits All the Right Notes

by Sarah Daniels

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus resisted the Sirens’ beguiling music by lashing himself to the mast of his ship. But few relocating businesses, ambitious young people from the Midwest and Mid-South or multifamily developers have been able to resist the charming sounds wafting from Music City these days. Nashville’s pro-growth disposition, competitive operating cost structure, high quality of life and vital cultural scene make it a formidable competitor for investment and business relocation among U.S. growth markets. Beverage marketer Icee, e-commerce unicorn SmileDirectClub and Mitsubishi North America were just a few of the nearly 100 companies that elected to move headquarters operations to or expand in the Nashville area last year. The moves were emblematic of Nashville’s emergence as the go-to spot for major industries — Tennessee now ranks second among states for automobile manufacturing employment after Michigan — and fast-growing tech-focused start-ups. The pipeline is just as robust in 2020. Employment statistics speak for themselves. Nashville added 30,000 or more payroll jobs in each of the last eight years: one of only two U.S. metros in the under 1.5 million-job weight class to check that box (Austin is the other.) While the unemployment rate was only 2.8 percent in January, …

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Atlanta Rent & Occupancy Forecast Under COVID-19 Stress
Content PartnerFeaturesGeorgiaLumentMultifamilyRED Capital GroupSoutheast

Atlanta Economic Juggernaut Encounters COVID-19 Roadblock

by Sarah Daniels

In January, the Atlanta market was ticking like a fine Swiss watch. With leadership from its robust crew of business, education, healthcare, accommodations and leisure services industries, the economy cruised into 2020 with a full head of steam. Although moderately slower than regional peers, Atlanta’s pace of job creation was considerably faster than state and national averages, contributing to falling unemployment — the metro rate was only 3.2 percent in January, the lowest ever for the first month of the year — and strong absorption of office space in blossoming Midtown. Construction projects large and small transformed the landscape at a formidable pace, molding urban neighborhoods in a grand style rarely seen in 21st century America. Multibillion dollar developments like Centennial Yards and the ambitious mass-transit-inspired Atlanta Beltline project promised to enhance the urban living environment while preserving Atlanta’s renowned quality of life. No commercial real estate segment was more active than multifamily. Last year, apartment properties valued at nearly $8 billion exchanged hands, establishing a metro series record. In addition, construction of more than 17,000 units is underway — assets with stabilized value of about $2.5 billion — and another 25,000 units are planned. Late-decade property performance was among …

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Craig Hagglund, Lee & Associates
Content PartnerFeaturesIndustrialLee & AssociatesNortheast Feature ArchiveRetailWestern Feature Archive

Free Returns: How Reverse Logistics Impacts Industrial Real Estate

by Sarah Daniels

The industrial sector has been the preferred asset class of commercial real estate in recent years. “The rate of return for industrial real estate has been higher than that of any other class for nearly half a decade,” says Jeff Rinkov, CEO of Lee & Associates. These rates of return are the result of permanent changes in consumer behavior and preferences — and recent events are driving more rapid changes in consumers’ e-commerce shopping. Though it remains to be seen how the economic impact of the coronavirus will influence various sectors of real estate, the pandemic has meant a sudden uptick in reliance upon industrial real estate as consumers turn to online shopping in the face of in-store shortages and shelter-at-home orders or social distancing practices. As brick-and-mortar stores close temporarily, retail companies and logistics professionals grapple with the increased volume of both online orders and e-commerce returns. What do facilities for e-commerce look like as customer expectations for e-commerce grow? How do companies process returns in an efficient and cost-effective manner, a critical element of success for e-commerce companies? Consumers increasingly prefer to shop online instead of going to brick and mortar stores. E-commerce sales accounted for more than …

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Raleigh Rent & Occupancy, RED Capital
Content PartnerFeaturesLumentMultifamilyNorth CarolinaRED Capital GroupSoutheast

Raleigh’s Potent Economic, Demographic Growth Rewards Multifamily Investors

by Sarah Daniels

Raleigh checks all the boxes: a youthful, highly educated population, top research universities, a thriving large cap research and tech sector, plus clement weather. It’s Austin with more first-rate college basketball teams and less traffic. Despite its conspicuous lack of entry barriers, multifamily investors and developers have placed enormous bets on Raleigh’s continuing success. Since 2017, apartment properties valued at nearly $8 billion have exchanged hands and over 15,000 market-rate apartment units worth more than $2.5 billion were delivered — a commitment of capital the equivalent of roughly $11,000 for every working Triangle resident. Competition promises to be no less taxing this year. Supply in 2020 will approach 8,000 units, easily the largest vintage in market history and an increase of 40 percent from last year. Few players have regrets. The metro apartment and labor markets continue to perform at full throttle, and investment returns remain among the highest in the country. There were, however, moments of doubt. Recent preliminary Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll employment and hourly wage data for the nine-month period that ended in June 2019 recorded uncharacteristically soft results. Initial reports suggested that metro payroll job formation had limped along at a 1 percent annual pace …

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Charlotte Rent and Occupancy, RED Capital
Content PartnerFeaturesLumentMultifamilyNorth CarolinaRED Capital GroupSoutheast

Charlotte Surges into the First Rank of U.S. Growth Markets

by Sarah Daniels

Charlotte is America’s second-largest commercial banking center, home to one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, Bank of America; soon the headquarters site of another when BB&T and SunTrust merge; and host to more employees of Wells Fargo than call its San Francisco base home. It would be hard to exaggerate the economic benefits the local market secures from this status. One growing but not widely appreciated benefit is the Queen City’s emergence as one of the world’s hotbeds of innovation in fintech, the space in which digital technology and financial services intersect. With support from local financial services giants, well-funded fintech incubators (like Queen City Fintech, hired by IBM to build and run their Hyper Protect accelerators) and a burgeoning start-up community, Charlotte has hatched a small army of successful fintech firms capitalized with more than $2 billion to date. Lately, entrepreneurs in other disciplines have come to appreciate Charlotte’s virtues. Nascent disruptors in the healthcare and electric power sectors are setting down roots in the city, attracted by its low operating and living costs, quality of life, deep well of talent and uniquely collaborative style. The injection of start-up energy into Charlotte’s thriving Fortune 500 business foundation catalyzed …

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Baltimore Multifamily Rent and Occupancy Forecast March 2020
Content PartnerLumentMarket ReportsMarylandMultifamilyRED Capital GroupSoutheastSoutheast Market Reports

Underappreciated Multifamily Markets: Maryland Edition

by Jaime Lackey

Although attractive multifamily investment opportunities may still be available in gateway cities, investors increasingly are sourcing deals in secondary markets where land and asset prices are lower, cap rates a bit more generous and an unpicked gem of value-add fruit can still be found on the vine by intrepid late-cycle buyers. Parties looking to replicate past successes may not have to look too far afield as Maryland markets — overshadowed of late by Washington and Philadelphia — offer much of what they seek with perhaps a lower degree of risk. In the last decade and particularly the last three years, the catalyst for economic growth in the Capital Area has shifted from government to high-tech services. As the tide turned, the focus of commercial real estate activity moved south toward Washington’s central core and Northern Virginia. In the process, the Maryland suburbs lost some of their star power. The diminished status of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties wasn’t entirely a matter of perception. Suburban Maryland apartment performance materially underperformed national averages in 2017 and 2018, and the spread widened between cap rates applied to Maryland properties on one hand and District and Northern Virginia assets on the other. Same-store property …

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Rob Rotach Walker Dunlop
Content PartnerDevelopmentFeaturesMidwestMultifamilyNortheastSoutheastTexasWalker & DunlopWestern

Opportunity Zones, HUD: Delivering More Workforce Housing

by Sarah Daniels

Many of today’s headlines about multifamily housing have focused on the market’s two extremes: homelessness and high-end penthouses. Meanwhile, a crisis has been growing in the “missing middle;” there is a shortage of affordable rental housing for middle-class workers like teachers, firefighters and police officers. In recent years, middle-income families have been struggling with flat wages and rising childcare, education and healthcare costs. Not only are families being priced out of homeownership, but they’re finding fewer rental units in their price range. Indeed, rents have been rising, particularly in cities with booming economies. Nationwide, only 37 percent of all available units rent out at or below $1,200 per month, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) Out of Reach report and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Yet only in 13 states do workers earn an average of at least $22.96 per hour, the amount required to comfortably afford a $1,200/month apartment. Charlotte is short 34,000 affordable housing units and Salt Lake City lacks 54,000. In total, there is a need for hundreds of thousands more affordable rental units. The problem is a matter of supply as well as demand. Formidable obstacles currently impede the …

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Washington and North Virginia Rent Occupancy Graph
Content PartnerDistrict of ColumbiaFeaturesLumentMarket ReportsMultifamilyRED Capital GroupSoutheastSoutheast Market ReportsVirginia

Washington’s Tech Boom Changes the Multifamily Investment Calculus

by Sarah Daniels

Washington and Northern Virginia are among the nation’s most expensive places to rent an apartment, which in part explains the billions of dollars being spent on apartment construction there. But Capital Area asset returns in the post-recession era haven’t clearly supported these decisions. From 2013 to 2018, rents in Washington and NoVA increased at respective compound annual rates of 3.2 percent and 2.6 percent, tabulating Reis data, materially slower than the 4.7 percent average growth recorded by the 50 largest U.S. apartment markets. Likewise, occupancy trends were no better than average, muted by heavy supply, suggesting that Washington NOI growth in most cases was measurably slower than in alternative markets. But everything changed last year. Although Washington has been a technology player for decades, the region’s strengths fell primarily in telecom and defense, markets in which proximity to government was a competitive advantage. But the region’s growing prowess in private applications of digital technology reached critical mass in 2019 with Amazon’s decision to site its East Coast headquarters in Northern Virginia, specifically with a view toward tapping its deep reservoir of high-tech talent. The impact on economic growth in the capital is only beginning and seems likely to fundamentally alter …

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Philadelphia Rent & Occupancy Graph 2020
Content PartnerFeaturesLumentMarket ReportsMultifamilyNortheastNortheast Market ReportsPennsylvaniaRED Capital Group

Philadelphia’s New Brand Identity in Commercial Real Estate

by Sarah Daniels

Interest in Philadelphia among commercial real estate investors has been on the rise for years. But the Eastern Pennsylvania market managed to maintain a relatively low profile in the public consciousness, overshadowed by its larger East Coast primary market rivals, each with its own clear brand identity. But this is largely a thing of the past. Philadelphia has emerged lately as a leader in cutting-edge biotech and life science innovation. The city is a magnet for gene and cell-level therapy entrepreneurs, a status that is rapidly evolving into a distinct brand. Billions in venture capital and real estate investment have followed, elevating the Athens of America to the top rank of U.S. competitors for global investment cash. The multifamily sector is a chief beneficiary of the trend. Fueled by strong demand for luxury space, builders ratcheted apartment development higher over the past 10 years, raising construction starts from about 4,000 units per year at mid-decade to 6,000 annually since 2017. Currently, there are about 8,000 multifamily units under construction, and the pace isn’t likely to slow much this year. The magnitude of the supply surge is anticipated with a degree of trepidation in some quarters. Philadelphia renters have never absorbed …

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