Features

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

Development Features Mixed-Use Western Feature Archive

The Future of Urban Real Estate Is Mixed-Use, 24/7, Outdoors

by Jeff Shaw August 4, 2023

— By Bob Lisauskas, Principal, RDC in Long Beach, Calif. — Daily patterns of life have been turned upside down since 2020. Three years since the disruption of quarantine living, it’s becoming clear what was temporary and what has been permanently changed. The good news: our cities have the potential to come back healthier than ever. Cities are resilient places and are finding ways to adapt and transform. Building owners, municipalities, architects and other stakeholders are actively collaborating on ways to repair the city fabric. While some of these companies and individuals have fled to the suburbs, many are more committed than ever to preserve urban living. This is often because they love the city where they own their property, and are personally motivated to breathe life into the area. Another wrinkle driving urban transformation is the housing crisis. It’s an urgent reality that we need more housing at every price point in our urban centers. This is something that’s of paramount concern, particularly in California, as rents and property values rise. These, along with other trends and market disruptors, are pushing cities toward a primarily mixed-use future in which new developments serve the entire 24-hour cycle: living, working, shopping …

August 4, 2023

Affordable Housing Content Partner Development Features Loans Midwest Multifamily Northeast Southeast Texas Walker & Dunlop Western

Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Industry Adjusts to HUD Curveball on Income Limits

by Sarah Daniels August 3, 2023

New income limits for low-income and very-low-income housing in 2023 represent a mixed blessing for the industry’s providers, who gain more potential renters but face ubiquitous caps that restrain their ability to adjust rents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes the income limits annually based on changes in each housing area’s median income, and typically places caps on outlier markets to prevent wide year-to-year swings. From 2010 through 2021, about 10 percent of areas were capped each year. Also in that period, the caps predictably checked the increase in an area’s qualifying income levels to no more than double the annual percent change in national median income. HUD published national median income based on three-year-trailing American Community Survey (ACS) data that HUD adjusted forward using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In 2022, however, HUD omitted the CPI factor and based limits on historical survey data alone, producing lower results for median incomes and a smaller percentage change to be doubled into a cap. Even so, calculated incomes rose significantly, spurring HUD to cap increases in 57 percent of areas. Industry experts had predicted HUD would add the CPI adjustment back into its calculations in 2023, resulting …

August 3, 2023

Parking Lot Aerial Bohler Shopping Center Retail

Bohler Content Partner Development Features Midwest Northeast Retail Southeast Texas Western

Converting Underutilized Parking Can Revitalize Shopping Centers

by Sarah Daniels August 1, 2023

Shopping center owners and property managers throughout the United States are exploring opportunities to increase foot traffic by transforming excess parking into restaurants, entertainment venues, neighborhood amenities and even multifamily uses. “In our experience, nearly every shopping center that’s not grocery-anchored is going through a process to reassess the amount of parking they have, the amount of parking they need and alternative ways to develop those parking areas to add value,” says Cornelius Brown, a principal in the Pennsylvania offices of Bohler, a land development consulting and site design firm. With more than 30 offices across the Eastern and Central United States, Bohler has helped many of its clients with parking conversions ranging from single pad site creation to comprehensive, property-wide redevelopment. Municipalities Onboard Landlords have been carving out parcels for standalone retailers, restaurants and other uses for years, but the trend is accelerating as more and more municipalities ease minimum parking requirements. Parking-reduction advocates have argued that offering fewer spaces reduces environmental impacts associated with heat islands and stormwater runoff. Others contend it promotes the use of mass transit and ridesharing, which can reduce vehicle emissions and, in the case of bars and restaurants, may reduce incidents of impaired …

August 1, 2023

Features Student Housing

Where Third-Party Management is Headed for Student Housing

by Katie Sloan July 28, 2023

Where is third-party management headed? This is a loaded question in 2023. The economic environment alone presents its fair share of challenges. An indirect result of fewer properties transacting in the student housing sector is that properties are changing management firms less often. This doesn’t mean that third-party managers are resting on their laurels, however. They are continuing to enhance operations to create a better experience for guests while becoming more efficient for their property owner clients. Instead, operators are using this time to hone their craft, and there is much to ponder. Which COVID-19 protocols should remain from an on-site perspective? Should they look at centralizing some processes? And how can the implementation of AI help streamline processes without taking away the personal element? All of these questions — and more — are currently being assessed by third-party managers heading into the all-important turn season this summer. But unlike the temperatures outside, operators are keeping their cool with a focus on what they do best — customer service. Meeting Current Challenges The sector — and commercial real estate at large — is facing a number of hurdles, many of which are being exacerbated by the looming turn cycle. “It seems each …

July 28, 2023

Content Partner Development Features Industrial Leasing Activity Lee & Associates Loans Midwest Multifamily Northeast Office Retail Southeast Texas Western

Lee & Associates’ Second-Quarter 2023 Economic Review by Sector

by Sarah Daniels July 27, 2023

Lee & Associates’ newly released 2023 Q2 North America Market Report outlines industrial, office, retail and multifamily outlooks trends in the United States. This sector-based review of commercial real estate trends for the second quarter of the year examines the difficulties facing each property type and where opportunities in the landscape may be emerging. Troubles with absorption dogged each sector, with the exception of retail, throughout the first half of 2023. Scheduled deliveries for industrial, office and multifamily indicate this trend will continue throughout much of the United States for the foreseeable future. Lee & Associates has made the full market report available here (with further breakdowns of factors like vacancy rates, market rents, inventory square footage and cap rates by city). The summaries from each sector below provide high-level considerations of the overall outlook and challenges in the market. Industrial Overview: Industrial Growth on Track for Least Gain in Years In a reversal from the ballooning logistics capacities required during the pandemic, demand for industrial space has slowed across North America. After continuously rebuilding inventories from the fall of 2021 through the third quarter of last year, many retailers and wholesalers are taking a breather, pausing further inventory accumulation out of caution over …

July 27, 2023

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