BFR hits record
The construction of single-family homes built deliberately to be rented is forging full steam ahead as investors bet on rentals. The number of newly built single-family homes being sold to investors to rent, or also...
Household formation and the quest for space
New research suggests one driving factor for the rise in new household formation: People got sick of living with each other. Unsurprisingly, when people are forced to convert their homes into home-office-gym-bars, they feel a...
Banks face risk from CRE loan exposure
Banks have seen a lot of concerns over the last few months by depositors, investors and regulators. Multiple institutions were shuttered when it became clear that rising interest rates undermined the value of their...
An idea so bad it was bound to return: public housing
One of the biggest frustrations about getting old is hearing younger people propose ideas that were debunked decades ago—and then getting “eyes glazed over” looks from them after explaining that we’ve already been there...
Finding value in AI
Over the course of 2022 and early 2023, tech innovators unleashed generative AI en masse, dazzling business leaders, investors, and society at large with the technology’s ability to create entirely new and seemingly human-made...
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish reveals key to human happiness
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once offered a bit of stoic wisdom about the importance of being grateful for the things we have. “Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent,” Aurelius wrote in “Meditations.” “Look...
Vacant apartments come from bad policy, not a conspiracy
On Halloween, 2022, some elected officials held a performative press conference to talk about “Zombie Apartments.” They claim property owners are engaging in a mass conspiracy to keep rent-stabilized apartments vacant in an attempt...
Mixed signals in May employment report
The Employment Situation Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that apartment operations employment and residential construction employment both rose compared to their revised levels from the month before. Total employment growth continues, or...
Multifamily construction spending continues slow rise
The Census Bureau’s report on construction spending said that the value of multifamily residential construction put in place in April was up 0.6 percent month-over-month. Spending on single-family continued to fall while spending on...
FHFA requests input on multifamily tenant protections
On May 30, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) issued a Request for Input (RFI) on tenant protections at multifamily properties with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises). Through their role...
Rent growth rate flat in May
The latest rent report from Apartment List shows that the national average monthly rent growth in May was a positive 0.5 percent, unchanged from last month’s increase. Year-over-year rent growth was 0.9 percent. Both...
JOLT data shows job openings rebound
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said that the number of job openings in April was 10.10 million, up 358,000 openings from last month’s revised...
Multifamily property prices down in April as transactions plunge
CoStar reported that its value-weighted index of multifamily property prices fell 12.2 percent year-over-year in April. This index was down 1.4 percent month-over-month. While last month’s report indicated that multifamily property prices had risen in...
Industry associations respond to Supreme Court WOTUS ruling
In Sackett v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the Clean Water Act only applies to wetlands that have a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States (WOTUS)....
Multifamily property prices again lead decline
The latest commercial property price report from MSCI Real Capital Analytics said that multifamily property prices fell 1.5 percent in April from their level of the month before. While this was again the largest...
