Features

Placemaking at Heart of Retail Redevelopment Projects

by Kristin Harlow May 9, 2023

The future of retail has been questioned many times in the last few years, but the sector continues to evolve and overcome any obstacles that arise. Today’s consumers want a gathering place to dine, drink and be entertained, especially after the isolation and stay-at-home mandates they endured throughout the pandemic. With that in mind, owners are redeveloping many underutilized retail properties into new concepts that invigorate the towns in which they reside. Take ROECO, for example, a project that aims to transform a former Sears Roebuck location in Lansing, Michigan, into a retail and entertainment destination. Owner Gillespie Group purchased the property about 10 years ago when Sears was still operating. Sears opened the property in 1953 and vacated it about four years ago. Most recently, a local hospital utilized the site for COVID-19 testing. Pat Gillespie, CEO of Lansing-based Gillespie Group, says his firm is actively marketing the project and has about seven to eight letters of intent with retailers. Gillespie’s main focus is retail and entertainment, but the firm is having conversations about hospitality or housing for the far northeast corner of the 14-acre property. Gillespie says the design of ROECO will have a retro feel to play …

May 9, 2023

Conference Coverage Features Student Housing

Wellness Amenities, Updated Technology are Top Priorities for Student Housing Projects, Says InterFace Panel

by Katie Sloan May 4, 2023

With some markets today saturated with new student housing development, differentiating your project has become of paramount importance. One of the primary ways of doing that is by keeping in touch with the wants and needs of today’s student — and specifically a community’s surrounding demographic. This was discussed at length during the kick-off panel for InterFace Student Housing, which took place in April in Austin, Texas. In preparation for the panel — titled “What’s Trending in New Development: A Survey of 2023 New Deliveries & How Developers and Operators Aim to Address the Needs and Wants of Today’s Students” — a survey was sent out by uForis to 500 Gen Z students ranging in age from 18 to 24 years old regarding their wants, needs and preferences when looking for their next place of residence. The primary takeaways from this year’s survey were the impact of regional differences due to weather and year-round use of amenities; the shift away from entertainment towards health and wellness for shared amenity spaces; and the increasing impact of tech offerings like digital touring and online leasing, according to panel moderator TJ Chambers, owner and founder of Chambers Real Estate Advisors. “During pre-development at …

May 4, 2023

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

Lee & Associates’ First-Quarter 2023 Sector-by-Sector Analysis Indicates Market-Wide Cooling

by Sarah Daniels May 2, 2023

High interest rates and economic uncertainty in the first quarter of this year contributed to lower absorption and declining rent growth in industrial, retail and multifamily sectors across the country, with some regional exceptions, according to Lee & Associates’ 2023 Q1 North America Market Report. Meanwhile office continues to struggle. The sector experienced its third-largest quarterly contraction since the beginning of the pandemic, as work-from-home preferences decoupled office occupancy from job growth numbers. The full Lee & Associates report is available (with further breakdowns of factors like vacancy rates, market rents, inventory square footage and cap rates by city) here. The analysis below provides an overview of four major commercial real estate sectors alongside trends, economic background and exceptions within each sector. Industrial Overview: Sharp Decline Hits First-Quarter U.S. Demand There was a sharp first-quarter decline in U.S. tenant demand for industrial space as wholesalers and retailers reconsider their inventory levels out of caution over the economic outlook. Net absorption in the first quarter totaled 39.4 million square feet, a 57 percent drop from the record set a year ago. The overall U.S. vacancy rate settled at 4.4 percent, an increase of 40 basis points from the close of 2022, comfortably …

May 2, 2023

Acquisitions Content Partner Features Midwest Northeast Office Southeast Texas Walker & Dunlop Western

Willy Walker, CEO of Walker & Dunlop, Outlines Capital Flow Issues, Market Pressures with Economist Dr. Peter Linneman

by Sarah Daniels April 27, 2023

On the April 12 episode of “The Most Insightful Hour in CRE” webcast, Willy Walker, CEO of Walker & Dunlop, spoke to renowned economist Dr. Peter Linneman, founding principal of Linneman Associates, about pressing issues facing the economy, pandemic repercussions, market predictions and much more. The discussion began by diving into the economy and real estate market in its current state of flux, with many challenges facing both investors and developers. Walker outlines the unease created by the recent Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank crises. “One of the data points announced by the Fed is that since the crisis, bank lending in the United States has gone down by $110 billion over the two weeks since the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Banks borrowed $160 billion in the two-week window prior. There’s a big drive toward liquidity; and yet there’s no new liquidity going out into the market.” “There’s 4.4 trillion dollars of commercial real estate (CRE) loans outstanding across all lending sources — CMBS, life insurance companies, banks, etc.,” continues Walker. “About half of that is non-multifamily properties. Banks hold about 40 percent of total outstanding loans on commercial properties.” If banks were to pull back from holding 40 percent …

April 27, 2023

Features Single-Family Rental

Amid Institutional Inertia, New Opportunities Arise for Smaller SFR Investors — If They Can Access Capital

by Taylor Williams April 26, 2023

By Marcia Kaufman, CEO of Bayport Funding Heightened real estate investment activity in the single-family rental (SFR) market in recent years has resulted in limited supply and commensurate pricing elevations across the country. Today, institutional investors with portfolios exceeding 1,000 units own approximately 3 percent of the 14 million SFR properties nationwide, or roughly 420,000 homes. Per a recent analysis conducted by Stateline, the nonprofit news service of Pew Charitable Trusts, as of 2022, both institutional and non-institutional investors own approximately 25 percent of all single-family homes (SFHs). Statistics provided by Redfin shed further light on these figures. A record-breaking 80 percent increase in SFH investment activity occurred between 2020 and 2021 in conjunction with lower mortgage rates at that time. By contrast, 2023’s combination of a cooling market, high interest rates, increasing prices and recession fears are leading many of the nation’s larger institutional investors — many of whom purchased during the pandemic — to offload their inventory with an urgency not seen in decades. This is resulting in opportunities for individual investors to build their SFR portfolios at a time in which demand is particularly high. The climate for growing an SFR portfolio is made more auspicious when …

April 26, 2023

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

Pavlov Media Ramps Up Multifamily, Student Housing Fiber Expansion with Equity Partner

by Sarah Daniels April 25, 2023

Pavlov Media is accelerating the expansion of its fiber network and fiber-to-the-home initiatives with a key investment from the world’s largest infrastructure investor, Macquarie Asset Management. The funding will help Pavlov Media augment its coverage of student and multifamily housing, developing and broadening resident access to high-speed Internet across a variety of property types. “We are ramping up our growth plans with a combination of building municipal fiber networks in college towns and extending service to underserved areas adjacent to our core markets,” says Glenn Meyer, board member and president of Pavlov Media. “It’s basically more of what we have already been doing but on a larger scale.” Pavlov Media is already the nation’s largest private provider of fiber-based Internet and video services to off-campus student housing, connecting properties in more than 150 U.S. markets and Canada to its national backbone via its own last-mile, municipal fiber networks and third-party circuits. The Champaign, Illinois-based company serves approximately 1,000 multifamily and student buildings encompassing more than 285,000 beds, and in recent years has begun extending fiber to customers in areas adjacent to its core student-housing markets. Now the broadband service provider is poised to quicken the pace of its growth with …

April 25, 2023

Features Student Housing

Rental, Occupancy Rate Growth Bring Benefits and Potential Pitfalls for Student Housing Sector

by Katie Sloan April 21, 2023

From a leasing and rental rate perspective, the outlook couldn’t be brighter in the student housing space. Yardi’s National Student Housing Report saw 96.6 percent of beds leased and an annual rent growth of 4.1 percent for the fall 2022 preleasing season at its ‘Yardi 200’ universities. These numbers are, for obvious reasons, a boon for the industry at large — particularly following several abnormal years surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. But it isn’t all sunshine and roses where higher rental rates are concerned. Raising the price to live in your properties is a delicate balance, and while there are many inherent benefits to owners and operators, there are also a number of issues that need to be considered — chiefly as it relates to a higher level of expectations from both students and parents. Levels On The Rise The industry’s performance ahead of the fall 2022 semester was nothing short of robust, and Casey Petersen, chief operating officer of PeakMade Real Estate, anticipates rent growth going into the 2023-2024 academic year to be even stronger. “We’ve budgeted for higher rent growth this year, and based on current velocity, we expect to significantly outperform,” he says. This experience is not unique to PeakMade; …

April 21, 2023

Acquisitions Content Partner Features Industrial Midwest Multifamily NAI Northeast Office Retail Southeast Texas Western

Tax-Efficient Investment Strategies Open New Opportunities Despite High Interest Rates

by Sarah Daniels April 20, 2023

The recent Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapses — and the takeover of First Republic Bank — have revived regulatory scrutiny on bank risk to a degree that is reminiscent of the financial crisis 15 years ago. Suddenly, it seems, everyone is concerned about the trillions of dollars in commercial real estate debt held at banks — and regional and community banks in particular — and whether it can be refinanced at higher interest rates as it matures over the next couple of years. The same holds for hundreds of billions of dollars of commercial mortgage-backed securities. The conditions are exacerbating a pullback in credit that started last year, which, along with the elevated interest rate environment, has depressed commercial real estate investment sales. In February, property sales dropped 51 percent, from $54.9 billion to $26.9 billion from a year earlier, according to MSCI Real Assets. Taken together, the wall of maturities, higher interest rates, bank collapses and a slumping economy have largely spooked the investment market, suggests Spencer Lund, chief investment officer with NAI Legacy in Minneapolis, Minn. (which also serves Chicago, Denver and Scottsdale, Ariz.) Still, it’s also the type of environment that breeds opportunity as prices …

April 20, 2023

Conference Coverage Features Student Housing

InterFace Student Housing ‘Power Panel’ Highlights Positive Outlook for Sector

by Katie Sloan April 19, 2023

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Experts in the student housing industry are bullish on the outlook for the upcoming academic year, citing the strong performance and outstanding fundamentals of the sector. At the recent 15th annual InterFace Student Housing conference in Austin, industry professionals from around the country convened at the JW Marriott downtown to share insights and discuss industry trends. The first full day of the conference kicked off with the ‘Power Panel’ session, where a consortium of high-level executives provided their outlook for the year ahead. “Evidenced once again by a packed house in this room, the sector is popping,” began moderator Peter Katz, executive director of Institutional Property Advisors. “As we continued to experience unprecedented, off-the-charts asset operations in 2022 and through the first quarter of this year, while simultaneously seeing the most mercurial capital markets we’ve seen in years, we have now statistically proven that the industry is not only recession resilient but pandemic resilient.” The real estate industry has been under a lot of pressure since the summer of 2022 as a result of the rapid rise in the cost of debt, which has created challenges as it pertains to valuing assets. “The recent quarter-point rise has …

April 19, 2023

Cliff McDaniel Lument Affordable Housing

Acquisitions Affordable Housing Content Partner Features Lument Midwest Northeast Southeast Texas Video Western

Higher Interest Rates Cause Affordable Housing Values to Return to Old Norms

by Sarah Daniels April 18, 2023

Rising interest rates dinging commercial real estate and multifamily assets have plunged low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) properties back into reality, especially those coming to the end of their 15-year compliance periods. “There were some huge profits made in the affordable housing space over the last two or three years,” says Cliff McDaniel, a managing director with Lument, which is representing Harmony Housing in the $1.4 billion sale of its affordable housing portfolio to the Michaels Organization. “We sold a lot of properties for $60,000 a unit or even $120,000 a unit, and the debt was $40,000 a unit. But the mania over that type of profitability is over, and values are going back to where they were before.” Up until about five years ago, the phrase “huge profits” and “affordable housing” would rarely if ever have occurred in the same sentence. Or even in the same story. Prior to that, affordable housing properties typically had very little value at the end of their initial 15-year compliance periods, and limited partners who provided equity to the project by buying tax credits routinely agreed to sell their interest to the general partner for a nominal fee. At that point, the …

April 18, 2023

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