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MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: made men, repo men, and receivership of a "hole" lot of nothing.
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Cash-crunched apartment owners that may have skimped on essential repairs over the past couple of years now have a new opponent to contend with. In addition to complaining residents, banks are also asking owners to step up and fix on-site problems.
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Everybody's got a smart phone. But what does it take to deliver an effective mobile platform for all those connected residents and prospects. Here are 10 tips to help your mobile platform stand apart from the rest.
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In the past year, REITs have been the biggest buyers in the multifamily sector. Why? Partly because they’ve been incredibly effective at taking on empty projects that were former condos or brand-new complexes.
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Campus Crest became the first multifamily/student IPO to make it through to Wall Street in this cycle. That’s no small feat, since a lot of companies have explored the possibility of going public. Campus Crest CEO Ted Rollins took some time to talk with Multifamily Executive about this latest...
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In the past year, the city of Houston, with the support of the Houston Apartment Association, has created a Multifamily Habitability Unit whose aim is to coordinate apartment oversight between multiple city agencies. The new venture was necessary. In the past, one city agency might visit a property...
Irvine, Calif.-based architectural firm KTGY Group has acquired CAX, a Tysons Corner, Va.-based architecture group under the leadership of Rohit Anand.
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Multifamily Executive Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: lousy licensing, terrier tenants, and going out with a bang.
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Weekly Download: Q&A With RealPage CEO Steve Winn sat down with Multifamily Executive to share his thoughts on the acquisition, the transition to a public company, and the future of multifamily technology.
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In late August, when Richmond, Va.-based Grubb & Ellis Apartment REIT agreed to take over the assets of Oakton, Va.-based Mission Residential—along with agreements totaling $182 million to acquire nine multifamily properties from affiliates of Mission’s MR Holdings—chairman, CEO, and chief...
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For the second time this year, Birmingham, Ala.-based REIT Colonial Properties Trust is pushing rents above levels suggested by its lease revenue optimization (LRO) system.
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The arrival of the Gen Y cohort has been one of the most eagerly anticipated events for apartment owners in many, many years. But when the economic collapse hit and Gen Yers lost their jobs, things changed.
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While most multifamily firms admit to at least dabbling in social media, polarization persists between apartment companies that have totally embraced social media as part of their marketing platform and those who remain skeptical of the true net worth of social networking to the bottom line.
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While multifamily technology executives continue to struggle with the ambiguity in semantics when it comes to cloud computing, even die-hard holdouts are beginning to investigate the cost benefits of outsourcing primary IT functions to “the cloud.”
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Multifamily CEOs speaking at the 2010 NMHC Technology Conference in Dallas agreed that the technology platforms of apartment companies have seen an evolutionary sea-change over the past decade that will both enable and command a continued strategic and budgetary focus on internet marketing and the...
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Indeed, whether through a defined internship program or via broader employee training platforms, multifamily firms specializing in the guidance and education of their teams from maintenance to management typically find higher success rates in recruitment, retention, and corporate culture adoption.
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Mike Schall may have a new role as CEO of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Essex Property Trust, but he is certainly no stranger to the company. Schall has served under outgoing CEO Keith R.Guericke for 24 years. When the company went public in 1994, he was CFO. Five years ago, he moved over to the COO...
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The apartment REITs finished up their third quarter reporting this week. As far as market fundamentals, there were no real surprises. But there were three prime takeaways, from the recovery to an increasing deal pace to a major move from UDR.
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The multifamily real estate sector posted its greatest quarterly occupancy gain in the third quarter and is poised to continue to benefit from single-family housing market decompression throughout 2011, commercial real estate economists said this week in separate forecasts delivered by New York...
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After 33 years at Essex Property Trust, Keith R. Guericke, president and CEO, announced that he will step down on Jan. 1, 2011. Guericke will continue to serve as the vice chairman of the board and serve as a consultant to Palo Alto, Calif.-based Essex. Michael J. Schall, Essex’s senior executive...
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Owner/operators who managed to acquire product in 2008 and 2009, as well as developers who had the tenacity to continue construction through the recession, are finding excellent returns in a disposition market that has since seen cap rate compression and supply-demand imbalances.
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Apartment rehab specialists are finding current work—and the prospect of exponentially increased business—much to their liking as apartment operators start fixing things up.
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As bidding frenzies and cap rate compression intensifies in core, high-barrier markets, firms like Pathfinder Partners and others are finding success with smaller deals in secondary markets that are below the radar of institutional buyers but out of reach of the typical country club and mom and pop...
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The Washington, D.C., market is hot. And it’s easy to see why. Driven by federal spending, unemployment is at 6.3 percent in the nation’s capital, while unemployment hovers at 9.6 percent in the rest of the country. The disparity has created powerful demand in D.C. and its suburbs.
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Apartment and student housing REIT reporting season started with a bang this week as Cleveland-based Associated Estates REalty increased its NOI guidance by 125 basis points for 2010 and Memphis-based Educational Realty Trust announced that it was selling off nine communities and recycling the...
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Multifamily isn’t the only housing sector beginning to deploy sidelined capital into Class A, high-barrier core acquisitions—or distressed commercial real esate, for that matter.
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If you have a distressed loan, and your lender is still talking to you, there’s probably a simple reason why—your lender doesn’t want that loan. But as panelists at last week's ULI Fall Meeting pointed out, the attitude of the lender could largely be traced back to what sector of the commercial...
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In the past couple of years, Greensboro, NC-based Bell Partners has added a lot of talent from the apartment REIT world. It’s brought aboard AvalonBay Communities alum Bob Slater as its chief operating officer, Colonial Properties Trust veteran John Tomlinson as CFO, and former UDR veterans Dhrubo...
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Pending official approval (expected October 19) from Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple, the Archstone iPhone app will hit the Apple App Store this week. The Englewood, Colo.-based Archstone gave Multifamily Executive an exclusive sneak peak into the iPhone technology prior to its public launch.
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Gables Residential executive vice president and chief operating officer Susan M. Ansel was named the 2010 Executive of the Year by MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE magazine at the annual MFE Awards ceremony in Las Vegas on Oct. 5. Ansel was one of two individual honors and more than 40 awards presented at the...
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Multifamily Executive Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: construction cyclists, design stars, and total vacancy.
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It’s no secret that the push for more transit-oriented development (TOD) has been a priority of the Obama administration. The administration created the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities under Director Shelley J. Poticha to allow HUD and the U.S. Department of Transportation to focus on...
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For more than a year now, multifamily equity funds, owners, and brokers have complained about the “extend and pretend” policy in the banking industry that have allowed owners with troubled loans to keep their assets. Yesterday, at the 2010 ULI Fall Meeting, Shelia Bair, Sheila Bair, chairman of the...
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For small developers like Jair K. Lynch, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Jair Lynch Development Partners, and Robert J. Lalanne, president of San Francisco-based Lalanne Group, the mid-2000s were heady times.
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The winning word on the streets of Sin City last week? Optimism. Attendees and speakers at the 2010 Multifamily Executive Conference, held Oct. 4-6, 2010, at the Bellagio Hotel & Conference were assertive in voicing optimism and confidence in the future of multifamily, pointing to a resurgance in...
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A huge number of Generation Y renters may be poised to enter the renter pool, but it would be a mistake for multifamily owners and managers to focus on their needs and interests to the detriment of attracting a broad base of renters.
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With interest rates low, apartment starts on the rise, owners pushing rents, and net operating income rising, things are definitely looking up in the multifamily industry. Nowhere was this sense of optimism more apparent at this week’s 2010 Multifamily Executive Conference in Las Vegas than in the...
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A panel of economists at the MFE Conference held in Las Vegas last week reinforced the sentiment of the entire event: Multifamily is a good place to be with a future that is brighter than expected.
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Three leading multifamily marketing experts offered three distinct case studies showing exactly how they have been able to get their marketing platforms to deliver.
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What will the apartment of the future look like to accommodate the needs of the looming wave of Echo Boomers and Gen Y renters?
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As rents continue to fluctuate from quarter to quarter, property managers are working hard to keep NOI at its maximum level.
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“Green” has become a major, inescapable buzzword over the past few years. But most discussions tend to revolve around greening new construction. Panelists at the MFE Conference in Las Vegas last week, however, focused strictly on sustainable retrofits.
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As the economy slowly improves, apartment renewal rates are finally beginning to creep up as owners and operators focus heavily on resident retention to keep much-needed heads in beds.
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For a while, it seemed like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac kept the multifamily transaction market going by themselves. And while they still retain a very pivotal role in the multifamily debt game, there are more players coming onto to the field, according to panelists at the MFE Conference last week...
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After more than a year in the doldrums, the multifamily transaction market began to come back around a year ago. For most of the past year, at least, asset values at top of the market properties in good locations, have been in full recovery. In fact, with a dearth of high quality products on the...
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Apartment investors looking to deploy capital into distressed asset investments should bring underwritten proposals directly to special servicers and brokers, according to panelists at the MFE Conference held in Las Vegas last week.
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In addition to continued interest in cloud computing strategies, multifamily apartment firms are again becoming interested in the up shot of engaging in social media, said a panel on apartment technologies at the MFE Conference last week in Las Vegas. After an initial buzz in the apartment industry...
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The need to deploy equity and return to lending in order to procure yield is driving capital providers back towards active involvement in both the debt and equity markets serving apartment investors, said panelists at the MFE Conference in Las Vegas last week. In particular, life insurance...
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Multifamily apartment companies could be facing an on-site hiring crisis as the economy improves the chances for recidivism just as the industry begins to look for higher levels of marketing and sales experience among their front line employees, according to a panel on apartment industry human...
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The unpredictability of rent fundamental improvements and NIMBYism continue to impact underwriting for multifamily land acquisition even as market conditions become favorable to apartment development, said a panel on land strategies at the MFE Conference last week in Las Vegas.
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Despite the general optimism in the multifamily industry, rehab still isn't penciling out. Modest improvements in occupancies and rents aren’t enough to push the rehab gates back open again, as every panelist on a renovation panel at the MFE Conference in Las Vegas last week pointed out.
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For much of the past couple of years, market-rate developers have relied on FHA 221(d)(4) constructions financing to start new projects. Without the HUD program, it’s hard to imagine many deals being started in this cycle at all.
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As the multifamily market appears to be turning the corner toward recovery uncertainty remains. But its appears that Highlands Ranch, Col.,-based UDR CEO Tom Toomey and his hard-hitting panel at Raising the Stakes: How to Lead and Implement Forward Looking Strategy in Uncertain Times at the 2010...