Secondary Markets Win Multifamily Investors

Bendix Anderson – nreonline.com

Multifamily investors are finding lower prices and higher yields in secondary markets. “Markets that people gave up on are now markets that people are going back to,” says Walter Page, director of research for Property and Portfolio Research, a division of the CoStar Group. “In most primary markets the average price per sq.ft. is twice what it is secondary markets.”

CoStar now expects to see the lowest average returns on real estate investments in prime markets like New York City and Washington, D.C. The highest average returns will come from investments in secondary markets, including … [Full Article]

Rental, For-Sale Markets Buck Odds, Rise Together

Bendix Anderson – Mar. 1, 2013

The apartment and for-sale housing markets usually compete with each other. Historically, the math has been simple and brutal: If the percentage of people who own homes goes up, then the percentage of people who rent goes down. Good news for housing sales often means bad news for the apartment sector, if the number of households that need homes stays stable.

But what’s happening today is different, according to the economists at the National Association of Realtors (NAR). “Rental demand and housing sales are rising… Full Article

Are Rising Rents Too Much of a Good Thing?

Oct 19, 2012 12:18 PM, By Bendix Anderson, Contributing Writer

It seems like such good news—apartment rents are rising faster than inflation. That means more profits for real estate investors.

But there’s also a risk. When rents rise faster than the paychecks of your residents, then that puts pressure on their budgets. Eventually they may look for other options. If you’ve carefully marketed your apartment community to a certain set of residents—say retirees or workers at the local hospital—it’s bad news for you if those people can no longer afford… [Full Article]