By Marc Betesh, founder and CEO of Visual Lease While the commercial real estate industry has experienced many uncertainties during the pandemic, the industrial and logistics market continues to thrive. With the rapid acceleration of e-commerce in the wake of COVID-19, major online retailers are picking up large warehousing and manufacturing spaces to keep up with the surge in demand, which is ultimately responsible for industrial real estate experiencing vacancies at historic lows in 2020. The trend of moving operations online is likely to continue at a faster pace after the pandemic subsides. Major retail companies have taken notice and are starting to capitalize on available real estate, converting square footage in malls to last-mile delivery centers and buying up spaces in logistics parks. To accommodate the increase in tenant demand, the industrial real estate market has already started to adapt. However, with all of the additional leases that have occurred in the short-term, is there still opportunity for this sector to grow? Who Are Industrial’s Biggest Winners? According to the U.S. Commerce Department, during the first half of 2020, e-commerce sales rose by 44 percent relative to that period in 2019. This rate of growth marked the highest year-over-year …
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Affordable Housing Sector is a Seller’s Market as New Buyers Enter the Fray, Says Exclusive Webinar Panel
Like many industries, the U.S. affordable housing sector has undergone a sea change stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Processes and protocols have changed for affordable housing professionals, some perhaps permanently. Closings are conducted virtually and some of the front-end work such as appraisals and subsidy applications look completely different than a year ago. The “new normal” that industry professionals are navigating has had a few stops and starts since March, but the sector is now in a place of relative comfort, and that’s led to investment sales picking up, according to Kevin Morris, senior director of Colliers International’s Affordable Housing Services team. “By trial and error, we’ve had to figure out systems and programs to do business,” said Morris, who is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “We’ve gone through these couple of stages, and now we’re at a point where we can implement and have implemented systems and programs that will take us through this particular pandemic. We’re transacting now, and so in that regard it is kind of back to normal.” Morris was one of six panelists that comprised the broker and lender panel at Affordable Housing Southeast, a webinar hosted by Southeast Real Estate Business magazine. Kyle Shoemaker, …
The editors of REBusinessOnline.com are conducting a brief online survey to gauge market conditions in 2021, and we welcome your participation. The survey should only take a few minutes to complete. Questions range from property sectors that you are most bullish on heading into 2021 to trends in deal volume to your outlook for interest rates. The results of our 10th annual survey will be collated and published in the January issues of our regional magazines. Conducting these surveys is part of our mission at France Media to provide readers with indispensable information, and we couldn’t do it without your help. To participate in our broker/agent survey, click here. To participate in our developer/owner/manager survey, click here. To participate in our lender/financial intermediary survey, click here. (Note: Please remember to click on “done” to properly submit the survey.)
Investors favor multifamily markets with brisk population growth and meaningful barriers to entry. But can a case be made in turbulent times for slow-growth Midwest cities characterized by weak entry barriers? View higher resolution version of chart above here. Midwest metro areas with relatively healthy demographic growth — Columbus, Indianapolis and Kansas City come to mind — have posted constructive performance trends during the pandemic recession so far, particularly with respect to rent. Among the 10 largest Midwest markets, Columbus recorded the fastest rent growth over the past three years (18.2 percent, according to Yardi Matrix) and nearly the fastest since the beginning of the pandemic (2.9 percent between February and October). Indeed, Columbus, Indianapolis (2.7 percent) and Kansas City (2.3 percent) respectively recorded the third, fourth and sixth fastest rent trends in the region since February, and each readily topped the -1.1 percent U.S. primary and secondary market average. The fastest rent growth in the region, however, was recorded by two metro areas not blessed with brisk population growth — Cincinnati and Detroit. Between February and October all property rents increased 3.0 percent in Cincinnati and 3.4 percent in Detroit, figures exceeded in only a handful of markets nationally. …
While the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly made life tougher for active adult investors, there is still capital available. It has just become harder to get. “The equity is pretty rational right now. It’s the TINA phenomenon — there is no alternative,” said Mark Marasciullo, chief investment officer with The United Group of Companies, which develops active adult properties. “There is, institutionally speaking, more and more equity piling up on the sidelines. The market’s pretty liquid, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s a lot of capital out there, but it’s fickle.” The comments came during a roundtable session titled “Investment Outlook for the Active Adult/55+ Market” at France Media’s InterFace Seniors Housing Southeast conference. The event was held virtually on Nov. 5 and 6. Marasciullo hosted the session, which invited attendees to openly lead the discussion. Marasciullo noted that continued high housing prices could keep move-ins high for active adult operators. Housing website Redfin reports that home-buying demand surpassed pre-pandemic levels by June. “If you’re contemplating selling your house, you’re looking around and saying ‘there’s never going to be a better time.’ Our industry has caught a bit of a tailwind,” said Marasciullo. “I’m actually very …
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Secondary Midwest Markets: Investor Refuge or Flavor of the Month?
More than a few column inches in multifamily media this year were dedicated to the implications of coronavirus on the housing preferences of renter households. Many theorize that the pandemic is leading householders to reexamine their attachment to urban life and consider suburban alternatives that offer larger floor plans, better schools, free parking and unit access without an elevator ride. Available data suggest there is something to this notion. Occupancy and rent in core urban neighborhoods in the primary markets have declined, substantially in the highest-cost cities. Suburban performance, by contrast, is strengthening. What is less certain is whether the same phenomenon is working to the benefit of secondary markets as well as big city suburbs. The jury is still out but investors already have stepped up acquisitions in the Sunbelt growth markets to exploit the opportunity — Austin and Phoenix were among the nine most active property markets in the third quarter, and Raleigh and Charlotte were just a step behind – but what of the staid and stable Midwest? Columbus, Indianapolis and Kansas City (the “Midwest Three”) stand out among Midwest cities as the secondary markets most likely to attract gateway city refugees. Each offers renters most of …
By Yuriy Gelfman, principal at Olive Tree Holdings Real estate investing is best viewed through the relatable lens of child rearing. An investment enters life with two parents — a limited partner (LP) and a general partner (GP). The parents really want their little investment to do well in life. The investment’s journey through life is full of obstacles and potential dangers, but through this metaphor, we can breathe life into a topic that can be dry on paper. Pre-Birth Planning An investment is born out of the good intentions of the GP. But how does the GP select the right opportunity to invest in? In the multifamily segment, there are 13 million apartments contained in large communities split among tens of thousands of properties in several hundred markets. This really is a lot of real estate. It’s important to not fall in love with any opportunity based on arbitrary or subjective reasons. We seek opportunities that are: 1) scaled 2) located in growth markets 3) acquireable at a large discount to replacement cost and 4) are underperforming immediate peers. Each acquisition takes a significant amount of time to identify, negotiate, arrange financing for, staff, asset manage, construct and ultimately …
Despite the negative impact of the pandemic on many areas within commercial real estate, industrial assets continue to attract interest as a favored sector of many lenders and investors. The industrial market is outperforming others throughout this period of disruption. E-commerce growth has resulted in growth in the industrial sector as the need for last-mile delivery and third-party logistics space increases. Similarly, urban infill demand has grown in supply-constrained markets. Finally, the supercharging the industrial sector has created a need for new construction in this asset class, and construction lenders are finding new opportunities to earn higher returns. View higher resolution version of chart above here. Industrial Market Trends In major urban markets — New York City included — residents increasingly expect two-day delivery, next-day delivery and even same-day delivery. As a result of these shrinking delivery windows, the need for local distribution centers and last-mile facilities has increased significantly. The way people purchase and receive products has changed drastically, and the industrial sector must adjust to meet the demand. The nation-wide stay-at-home orders implemented at the outset of the pandemic caused e-commerce to experience exponential growth. People who had never shopped online began adapting to this trend. This created …
One of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic for student housing internet providers has been upgrading their bandwidth capabilities to ensure that all students in a community have reliable and fast connections. The proliferation of video calling between students and professors during the pandemic has been a major driver of this hustle to upgrade connectivity services. The number of megabits per second needed for a Zoom call is something that today’s networks can handle, according to Daniel Myers, president and founder of DojoNetworks and a speaker at the NMHC/InterFace Student Housing Conference. The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) and InterFace Conference Group co-hosted the virtual event, which took place from Oct. 19 to 22. The organizations’ physical events normally take place in April (InterFace Student Housing) and October (NMHC Student Housing). One problem that the panelists of the Internet Connectivity and Technology panel spoke about was hosting multiple students on the same network simultaneously. A Zoom call requires two-and-a-half megabits per second to upstream (when the video is input) and downstream (when the video is distributed), according to Myers. “If you have five students on a call and they only have eight or 10 megabits upstream, then they’re stuck …
Despite High Materials Costs, Student Housing Builders Don’t See Slowdown, Says NMHC/InterFace Panel
One of the most pressing issues for general contractors today is the high cost of lumber. In the past five months, the cost of lumber has increased nearly 100 percent on projects, according to Justin Walker, president of Construction Enterprises Inc. Luckily, his firm had locked in the cost of materials prior to the pandemic on all but one of its current projects. Walker’s comments came during the Construction Market Update at the 2020 NMHC/InterFace Student Housing Conference. Joining Walker on the panel were David Mellema, director of preconstruction for The Weitz Co.; and Mark Knott, vice president with Project Management Advisors Inc. Brent Little, president of Fountain Residential Partners, moderated the discussion. The National Multifamily Council (NMHC) and InterFace Conference Group co-hosted the virtual conference, which took place Oct. 19 to 22. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the lumber mills had to take a step back with their production and close some plants, said Walker. “The construction industry, housing market and multifamily market never slowed down, but the actual production of the mills did.” The producer price index (PPI) for inputs to construction — a measure of both goods and services used in every type of construction — increased …