Developers Are Building Student Housing For Young Professionals

Developers Are Building Student Housing For Young Professionals
Developers are building for Millennials who wish they never left college. New apartments are popping up around the country with the perks of student housing, but without those pesky classes. In college neighborhoods like University City PHL, Tempe, AZ, and College Station, TX residential units geared towards young professionals are in the pipeline, with amenities like roof decks, heated saltwater pools, fire pits, and outdoor TVs. “In a way, it’s almost a continuation of the college experience,” Bruce J. Katz, Brookings Institution’s global urbanization expert, tells the New York Times. Rents are high in the new digs, generally over $1,500/month—enough to keep out unwelcome undergrads, despite the buildings’ replication of the college life.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/college-never-ends-student-housing-for-young-professionals-54864?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser

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Multifamily REITs Cash In

Leading multifamily REITs are selling off properties—starting with the largest apartment REIT Equity Residential, which announced plans to sell off nearly a quarter of its apartment portfolio on Oct. 26.

“This is an extremely opportune time for Equity Residential to monetize our investments in this portfolio of assets,” said David J. Neithercut, president and CEO of Equity Residential.

REITs usually need to keep growing to help keep their stock prices rising. But leading apartment REITs have become net sellers this year, starting with Equity. The huge deal will dispose of nearly a quarter of Equity’s portfolio of more than 109,000 apartments. In addition, Equity is not planning to spend the cash from the sale on buying other apartments or developing new properties. Instead, the REIT plans to pay down its debt and return a large dividend to its shareholders.

Equity plans to sell more than 23,000 apartments at 72 properties to Starwood Capital Group, through a controlled affiliate, for $5.365 billion. About half of these properties are located in Florida, with other communities in Denver and California’s Inland Empire, in addition to core markets including Washington D.C. and Seattle. Going forward, Equity also plans to sell an additional 26 properties totaling 4,728 apartment units, one at a time or in small portfolios, including all of the company’s assets in Connecticut and in non-core sub-markets of Massachusetts. The sale to Starwood, combined with these other sales, will result in the company’s exit from the South Florida and Denver markets, as well as the New England sub-markets.

“We have also narrowed our focus, which will now be entirely directed towards our core, high-density urban markets,” says Neithercut.

Read entire article in National Real Estate Investor

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Solar Power Is Within Reach for Multifamily Owners, Developers

Solar power is becoming a much better investment for owners and developers of apartment properties. The price to buy solar panels has dropped significantly, and today’s photovoltaic panels are much more efficient than just a few years ago. Prices are now so low that a set of rooftop solar panels sometimes makes sense purely as an investment, without any extra cash from subsidy programs or tax credits.

“In many areas there is actually grid parity, meaning you could produce power at the same cost or better than what it costs to buy from the utility,” says Thomas Osdoba, vice president of green initiatives for Enterprise Community Partners Inc.

Read entire article at National Real Estate Investor

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Apartment Volume Slides 17% in July

The frantic apartment transaction market of the past few years may finally be slowing.

With $9 billion in transaction activity in July, apartment sales fell 17%, according to New York–based commercial research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA).

RCA attributed the decline in apartment sales activity to a drop-off in portfolio and entity-level transactions, which fell 65% to $1.2 billion. But RCA noted other problems as well in its report.

Read entire article here in MultiFamily Executive.

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Construction Lenders All-In for Apartments

Banks are eager to lend money to apartment developers to build new apartments. “We still get a number of bids for every deal—four to six or more,” says Michael Riccio, co-head of national production for CBRE Capital Markets.

Construction lenders seemed on the brink of tightening their lending standards earlier this year. Experts worried too many apartments were already under construction and vacancy rates were about to rise. But this spring, demand for apartment properties continued to grow, powering yet another strong season of rising rents—and construction lenders are eagerly making loans to new development projects.

Read entire article here in National Real Estate Investor.