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The digital natives are getting restless. Armed with tablets and smartphones, raised on apps and connectivity, and coddled by the rich customer experience of major online retailers, today’s apartment prospects want serious answers as...
The front line in affordable housing
In 2012, Congress authorized RAD which allows PHAs and owners of other properties financed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to convert units from their original sources of HUD financing to...
Space, the new frontier
We live in an age of disruption and the multifamily industry, historically slow to adapt to change, is especially at risk. NMHC’s 2018 Consumer Housing Insights Survey, alongside an in-depth trends report, Disruption: How...
Cool on Fannie, Freddie reform
Congress is mulling changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which could mean big changes in the apartment investment market. The two financing giants handle financing for between 40 percent and 50 percent of all...
Occupancy holds strong
Developers opened a tremendous number of new apartment units in 2017. But the percentage of apartments that are occupied has barely shifted, despite competition for potential residents. Rents continue to grow in most markets. “Occupancy...
Parking premiums
Back in mid-2015, Minneapolis made some changes to its zoning code to allow residential projects near transit to be built with less off-street parking than had previously been required. Before the changes, housing projects outside...
On the mark
Foreign investors, along with core, core-plus and open-end real estate funds, are moving into multifamily investments because of demographic trends. Young and older Americans are preferring to rent apartments rather than buy homes. While...
Why IoT is about to explode
Current methods of connecting IoT devices have limitations that make applications unsuitable for IoT, but according to Deloitte, two recent technologies will help expand IoT possibilities: low-power wide-area (LPWA) networks, and the arrival of...
Social media 2018
A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that the social media landscape in early 2018 is defined by a mix of long-standing trends and newly emerging narratives. Facebook and YouTube dominate this...
The second-life of bad data
Poor data quality is enemy number one to the widespread, profitable use of machine learning. While the caustic observation, “garbage-in, garbage-out” has plagued analytics and decision-making for generations, it carries a special warning for...
The invisible boss
My friend was giving it his all, but he needed more support and better feedback than he received. He wanted a leader who would be around when he needed him, and who would give...
Real estate tech boom
Real estate tech investment has gotten serious. Venture capital invested in the space tripled from 2016 to 2017, buoyed by major investments in co-working giant WeWork and brokerage Compass. Excluding those mega deals, real...
Connecting tech with apartments
New digital resources on industry disruption Tectonic shifts in technology, commerce, family, work, transportation and lifestyle are poised to radically reshape multifamily’s customer expectations, as well as our approach to designing, developing and operating our...
Criminals vs. property owners
But adjudication processes by regulatory agencies are different, and sometimes result in property owners being treated worse than criminals. In criminal law, due process works to ensure that innocent people are not convicted of crimes....