Features

Mind the Gap(s): InterFace Panelists Highlight Divides in the Senior Living Industry and How to Bridge Them

by Hayden Spiess August 31, 2023

ATLANTA — The demand metrics of seniors housing are extremely compelling, given the demographics of Americans aging into the product type. But that demand is not necessarily translating directly to occupancy at senior living properties. This disparity between leads and move-ins is just one of the gaps that the panelists highlighted throughout the “Power Panel” at France Media’s InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast conference that touched on marketing, generational differences and family expectations. Hosted Aug. 16 at the Westin Buckhead in Atlanta, the panel offered insight into the state of the industry, as seen through the eyes of C-Suite executives. Participants included Iyvonne Byers, CFO of Priority Life Care; Judd Harper, president of The Arbor Co.; Doug Schiffer, president and chief operating officer of Allegro Senior Living; Shelley Esden, president and CEO of Sonata Senior Living; and Terry Rogers, president and CEO of Westminster Communities of Florida. John Lariccia, CEO of WelcomeHome Software, served as the moderator. Follow the lead Esden said that the “big discrepancy between the rise in the number of leads and the rise in move-ins” can be partly accounted for by the prevalence of digital marketing and automation, particularly in the post-COVID landscape. For this reason, she …

August 31, 2023

Acquisitions Build-to-Rent Content Partner Development Features Leasing Activity Midwest NAI Northeast Single-Family Rental Southeast Texas Western

Single-Family Rental, Built-to-Rent Investment Sales Outlook Remains Positive Despite Economic Challenges

by Sarah Daniels August 29, 2023

The multifamily sector is under general disruption from a variety of factors, such as falling valuations, financing difficulties, questions about forward net operating income, shifts in regulations and more. Chris Town, who works in commercial sales and leasing at NAI Latter & Blum in Baton Rouge, La., is an expert in single-family rental (SFR) and built-to-rent (BTR) investment sales. Town says that there are challenges, but a solid future ahead for the sector. The overarching challenges take the form of the Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. “It’s the major factor behind the immediate slowdown of home construction and home buying,” Town explains. “Another factor, of course, is land. These are true whether you’re talking true multifamily or the submarkets of BTR and SFR.” A combination of factors has created a tug-of-war among incentives. High interest rates, with home prices at or near historical highs, mean millions of people need places to live. Many of these potential homeowners have families and want the ameliorations and amenities of a detached single-family housing. “Depending on the metric and organization’s research used, you could say the country is five to six million units short on single-family homes,” Town says. The Larger Economy’s Impact on …

August 29, 2023

Features Nevada Retail Western Western Feature Archive

Owners Need Creativity, Adaptation and Capital to Keep Malls Alive in 2023

by John Nelson August 25, 2023

By Dan Spiegel of Coldwell Banker Commercial As we enter an age where online shopping dominates the retail landscape, a recurring discussion in commercial real estate is what part malls play in this new world, if any part at all. More and more malls are “dying out,” which creates a difficult challenge for property owners as conventional indoor malls are no longer a commodity due to constantly evolving shopping trends. My team and I work with retail property owners and buyers at Coldwell Banker Commercial to address these difficulties and help build a new future for successful mall properties. Thankfully, there are a few key strategies property owners can implement to save their shopping centers from becoming obsolete. One of these strategies includes renovating a mall to create new stores and experiences, repositioning the space as a social destination for recreation. Another involves transforming shopping centers into mixed-use spaces, adding apartments and multifamily units to increase foot traffic and provide people with access to shopping, housing and other essential services. Older Properties, New Market The Reno Public Market in Reno, Nev., is a great case study that demonstrates one of the ways in which property owners can adapt to current …

August 25, 2023

Multifamily Markets Navigate Challenges Alex Virtue

Acquisitions Build-to-Rent Content Partner Features Loans Midwest Multifamily Northeast Single-Family Rental Southeast Texas Walker & Dunlop Western

Multifamily Owners Navigate Challenges, Opportunities Arising from Capital Markets

by Sarah Daniels August 24, 2023

When Zelman & Associates’ 2023 Virtual Housing Summit opens in September, Alex Virtue will take the stage as a newly appointed managing director who has been charged with expanding the firm’s investment banking coverage of multifamily and other commercial real estate property sectors. Virtue joined the institutional research advisory and investment firm in May with over two decades of experience in mergers and acquisition transactions and capital raising across real estate sectors in both the public and private capital markets. His resume includes senior positions with Merrill Lynch, Eastdil Secured/Wells Fargo Securities, CBRE Capital Advisors and Xebec, an industrial developer and asset manager. Zelman & Associates, founded in 2007, was acquired by Bethesda, Md.-based commercial real estate finance and advisory firm Walker & Dunlop in 2021. “My focus at Zelman and Walker & Dunlop is broadening the firm’s reach on entity-level transactions in multifamily and related housing sectors such as single-family rentals, built-for-rent, student housing, affordable housing and manufactured housing communities, as well as other commercial real estate sectors,” says Virtue “I would characterize my concentration as bringing traditional banking investment expertise, knowledge and services across the Walker & Dunlop platform and working with my colleagues to bring these advisory …

August 24, 2023

Conference Coverage Features Georgia Seniors Housing Southeast Southeast Feature Archive

Seniors Housing Transaction Activity Will Not Return to Normal Levels This Year, Says InterFace Panel

by John Nelson August 22, 2023

ATLANTA — One of the central questions of the investment panel at InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast was: Will transaction activity return in the fourth quarter? When Brooks Blackmon, panel moderator and executive managing director of Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, asked the question, there was a quick response from the panel — “no.” “Return to what?” asked Kelly Sheehy senior managing director of Artemis Real Estate Partners. “Higher than today? Yes. Compared to 2019? No, it’s going to take time.” InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast is an annual conference hosted by France Media’s InterFace Conference Group, Seniors Housing Business and Southeast Real Estate Business. The event was held on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at the Westin Buckhead Atlanta hotel. Blackmon moderated the discussion. The panelists agreed that the fly in the ointment that has stifled investment sales the past few quarters has been the rapid runup in interest rates. The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.3 percent at the time of this writing, which is the highest level since 2007. The secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) and federal funds rate, two short-term benchmark interest rates, have risen by more than 500 basis points in roughly 16 months. “Until debt markets improve, you’re …

August 22, 2023

Bohler Content Partner Features Industrial Midwest Mixed-Use Multifamily Northeast Retail Southeast Texas Western

Improved Land Surveys, Due Diligence Can Ensure Development Project Success

by Sarah Daniels August 17, 2023

Due diligence — particularly land surveying — can be a slow, cumbersome process if a project lacks strong guidelines based on the owner or developer’s particular needs. It can be easy to overprepare for the wrong site or underprepare for the succession of steps needed for the right site. REBusiness spoke to two land surveying experts, Billy Logsdon, divisional director of surveying, and Tom Teabo, associate and regional survey manager. Both work for Bohler, a land development consulting and site design firm, and both have strong insights on how to incorporate each step in the due diligence process elegantly within a well-planned approach. Due diligence such as American Land Title Association (ALTA) surveys and gathering topographic information can be time-consuming and expensive steps — making it beneficial to fit their timing into the larger project in a way that reflects the client’s needs — from the purchase of land to development completion. Logsdon and Teabo highlight the importance of streamlining the survey process and getting owners and developers better results based on their desired outcomes, often starting with the information already available about the site early in the process. REBusiness: What is slowing down survey due diligence, in your experience, and do …

August 17, 2023

Features Hospitality

We’re All in the Hospitality Business Now

by Taylor Williams August 16, 2023

By Rob Olivet, senior director, MGAC One of the biggest challenges that commercial owners and operators face regardless of market or property type is creating places where people want to be, both from an employer and user perspective. From multifamily and offices to schools and hospitals, the reality of built space today is that people are managing more of their professional and personal obligations remotely. As a result, owners, developers and managers across industries are looking to the hospitality industry for cues on how to be more intentionally user-focused and create reasons for people to want to occupy their spaces. When it comes to leisure spaces, the key is to deliver unique experiences that are hard to find elsewhere. The sector that has excelled at this more than any other is, unsurprisingly, hospitality. After all, hotels are specifically designed to cater to their guests. These properties are service-oriented, feature many amenities and focus on creating a sense of wellness, fun and relaxation. Developers that focus on student housing, higher education, office and even healthcare projects are making conscious efforts to construct spaces that are less institutional and more hospitable. For office and healthcare settings in particular — those in which …

August 16, 2023

Roxann Campbell Pavlov Media Multifamily Wi-Fi

Content Partner Features Midwest Multifamily Northeast Pavlov Media Southeast Student Housing Texas Western

Pavlov Media Delivers, Manages Optimal Wi-Fi Service for Multifamily Residents

by Sarah Daniels August 15, 2023

Day-to day life as a property manager in both a conventional multifamily building and student housing can be unpredictable. Hiring and staffing issues can plague many operators, resulting in the need to wear many different hats. These different hats can make it difficult for staff to fully address all of the residents’ needs. Managing a Wi-Fi system — perhaps the most crucial technology platform at any community — is one duty that the onsite team can happily offload to a third-party provider. Reliable Managed Wi-Fi Systems Roxann Campbell, vice president of regional sales at Pavlov Media, says today’s Internet-connected culture has increased the need for residents to have an absolutely reliable managed Wi-Fi system. Pavlov Media (which provides Wi-Fi & fiber services to multifamily and student properties) is an Internet service provider (ISP) that can establish connectivity throughout entire buildings while managing Internet for all of a property’s residents. This managed Wi-Fi approach benefits the buildings’ owner-operators because it offers a planned strategy for wiring and Wi-Fi signals. Routers aren’t competing against each other, as they can in communities that give their residents the option to sign up with any number of competing Internet providers. “Bulk managed Wi-Fi provides residents …

August 15, 2023

Build-to-Rent Features Single-Family Rental

How Build-to-Rent Projects Create Much-Needed Housing Supply, Sense of Community

by Taylor Williams August 10, 2023

By Andrew Welker, founder and CEO, Welker Properties Institutional investment in the single-family housing market is waning as high interest rates show no sign of letting up. For the first time in years, corporate investors looking to borrow money are having difficulty finding cash flow with current interest rates. As a result, some institutional investment firms are hitting pause on real estate portfolios or pivoting to all-cash deals on low-priced housing stock. This shift makes it more difficult for individual first-time homebuyers to get in on the game. With buyers and sellers holding out for better returns, a shrinking debt market isn’t helping with the supply shortage. According to data supplied by Freddie Mac and analyzed by Axios, the country needs nearly 4 million units — both for rent and for sale — to meet demand based on current rates of household formation. There simply isn’t enough housing being built to meet demand. Enter build-to-rent (BTR), an asset class that’s skyrocketed in popularity in recent years as COVID-19 pushed people out of cities and affordable homeownership further from their reach. Offering the four-walled privacy of a single-family unit and the conveniences of multifamily construction, BTR is community-style living for …

August 10, 2023

Acquisitions Content Partner Development Features Industrial Midwest NAI Northeast Southeast Texas Western

Logistics, Location, the 1.5-Year Rule Drive Industrial Tactics

by Sarah Daniels August 8, 2023

Location’s importance to commercial real estate has become a cliché. But in logistics and industrial considerations, the idea is new again — it’s not about where you are but where customers need to go and the primacy of transportation. If you’re not at the place and time that clients need, it doesn’t matter how theoretically fine the setting or how impressive the facilities are. “Transportation is roughly 12 times the cost of industrial real estate,” says Adam Roth, executive vice president at NAI Hiffman. Finished products, goods and materials are sent into and out of facilities over and over again. Shipping and trucking are a stiffly recurring expense and a much higher spend than real estate. “If I can impact your transportation spend, the real estate is a much smaller factor in the supply chain. If you can address the current concern of transportation, real estate rates almost doesn’t matter, due to a location’s supply chain advantages. Real estate can be one of the best ways to combat transportation costs.” The Rule of 1.5 In practical terms, customers’ plans for transportation are a series of changes, starting at factories, going to ports or warehouses for inventory, on to major and …

August 8, 2023

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