The price of disorder
I was once pitched a deal in the heart of the Amazon—Manaus, Brazil. What was I buying? Firstly, a commercial asset. But I couldn’t shake my concern around governance. The sanctity of a contract...
San Francisco city council targets free speech to cover up its own housing failures
The San Francisco city council is smashing the mirror because it doesn’t like the face staring back at it. The council just approved a ban on websites that offer data about local rental markets and...
California to turn unused school land into millions of housing units
In an effort to address a lack of housing that officials say has contributed to a shrinking teaching workforce, the California Department of Education is planning on converting undeveloped school lots into affordable housing. State...
Market set for recovery
The multifamily housing market is showing promising signs of recovery, with recent data from CoStar Group revealing a significant increase in demand and stabilization of vacancy rates. Absorption rates have notably risen from 118,000 units...
Apartment market fundamentals stabilized in July, reports RealPage
According to data from RealPage Analytics, apartment fundamentals stabilized in July. Rent growth and occupancy remained relatively steady during the month. National occupancy was 94.2 percent for the third straight month, which...
Increasing apartment supply is slowing new lease-up velocity
Increasing apartment supply is slowing new lease-up velocity, said Madera Residential head of investment strategy and research Jay Parsons. Leasing velocity for newly built apartments is at its slowest pace in recent...
Office to apartments
download pdf Hybrid work is likely here to stay. This shift isn’t just changing lifestyles—it’s also affecting commercial spaces. Office vacancy rates post-COVID shot up almost overnight, and they remain near 20 percent nationwide, the...
L.A. homeless tower building cost rings bells
Gym, balconies, restaurant, soundproof music studio, business center, located in downtown Los Angeles, and it’s pet friendly. Sounds like a pretty good hotel, four-stars at least. Sounds like it, but it isn’t. It’s the new Weingart...
Rents fall behind inflation
Tracking rents is important for understanding the dynamics of the housing market. For example, the sharp increase in rents helped me deduce that there was a surge in household formation in 2021 (September 2021:...
Economics and the hidden order
The “real world” is calling. But the real world is a real mess. So how do we clean up the mess? That’s a massive task: too big for any one person. This looks like...
The incredible disappearing Starwood CRE investor
The $10 billion fund from Starwood Capital Group has been trying to preserve its available cash and credit by limiting investor redemptions. In the first quarter, the fund was hit with $1.3 billion in...
Investors circle overleveraged apartments
Rescue capital is available for apartment borrowers that need it, but relatively few owners of over-leveraged apartment properties are willing to pay the price—so far. High interest rates have stranded the owners of over-leveraged apartment...
Rent control still the wrong solution to housing woes
Restricting the price of housing kills incentives to supply places to live. Rent control is having something of a moment: In Los Angeles, tenants are invoking a law that imposes limits on apartments built on...
INFOGRAPHIC: Interest rates slow apartment development
Rising interest rates, tighter lending and flattening rents in parts of the country have left property companies from California to Florida waiting for financing that may not come soon. +500 days (up 45% from 2019)...
