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Multifamily Executive scoured the headlines of the past decade to reflect on the 10 biggest news stories of the 2000s. Here's a look back.
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The past decade has seen a number of apartment industry chieftains who have emerged to leave their mark on the multifamily sector. Here are 10 that wielded the greatest influence.
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Multifamily Executive Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: apartment blogs with attitude, month-to-month mayhem, and holiday tips for property managers.
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Earlier this week, San Diego-based Fairfield Residential, the nation’s 13th largest apartment owner, announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now that the dust has settled, experts say the filing was long expected, and despite the news, the industry can expect an orderly bankruptcy process without a fire sale of assets.
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Multifamily utility billing is about to come out of the basement closet and onto a Web site near you. Several industry programs are in the works that seek to make unit-level energy usage available publicly via the Internet. Companies benchmarking from that data could then communicate the relative energy efficiency of apartment communities to renting consumers, likely in the form of a sticker or other certification that could be displayed on property and as a part of marketing collateral.
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Attorneys representing Tishman Speyer and residents of Manhattan’s behemoth Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village apartment complex reached a partial settlement in ongoing legalities this week that will ultimately see the return of some 4,400 units at the mega-community back to rent stabilization. Under the terms of the settlement, which was approved Tuesday morning by New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert Lowe, market-rate residents who elected to be part of the class action suit against Tishman Speyer will pay either estimated stabilized rents or their current negotiated rent, whichever is less, in January and February 2010, while a special consultant determines the longer-term stabilized rental rates for the units.
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As different funds jockey for distressed assets, one of the places they’ve looked is properties owned by Tenant-In-Common (TIC) groups. It’s not hard to see why. With multiple investors, it’s hard for these deals to be refinanced in the current environment.
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Not surprisingly, a third-quarter Mortage Bankers Association (MBA) report says delinquencies rose in the multifamily business (and all of commercial real estate) from the second to third quarters. While the 90-day-plus delinquency rate on Freddie Mac remained unchanged, Fannie Mae’s 60-day-plus delinquencies rose 0.11 percentage points.
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April 15 is still more than four months off, but that hasn’t kept Al Campbell from thinking about taxes. This week, Campbell, the CFO of Mid-America Apartment Communities in Memphis, Tenn., flew to Atlanta to visit with the company’s tax consultants from its different regions. They look at each property, look at last year’s assessments, gauge the value, and then the consultant tell tells them what they think next year’s assessment will be. And then they’ll decide whether to begin a dialogue with the city—before the assessment even comes out.
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Denver-based REIT UDR lost a prime information technology asset this month with the departure of senior vice president and chief information officer Dhrubo Sircar, and more multifamily tech news.
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Multifamily Executive Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: slim versus candy, queuing up for condos, and not-so divine development intervention.
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At long last, Las Vegas’ highly-anticipated CityCenter opened it doors this week to much fanfare. The $8.5 billion live/work/play mega-complex is billed as the largest privately-funded project in the country and considered an enormous gamble for a city that’s been struggling to stay afloat since the recession hit.
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What do you get when you combine two of today’s hottest development trends? A green, prefabricated home. And developers say the combination allows for the best of both worlds.
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In the last months, two REITs have seen senior executives leave. In a sign of the times, the companies will spread their duties among multiple existing executives.
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Small town rent boosts could be an indicator of multifamily recovery. A regional report sees rent growth in outlying areas compensating for continued flat conditions and decreases in more populated markets.
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Condo sales are picking up in South Florida. But it’s not being driven by people who want to live in the units they purchase. It’s being propelled by bulk buyers—those groups purchasing 10 units or more.
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The Washington, D.C.-based National Multi Housing Council (NMHC) and Arlington, Va.-based National Apartment Association (NAA) announced last month that they have agreed to continue their joint legislative program to lobby Capitol Hill on behalf of the multifamily apartment industry. Here are their top 5 priorities for 2010.
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MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: slam-dunk slum lording, luxurious defaults, a box turtle turn of events, and multifamily monkey business.
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News that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is changing its approval process for condominium projects was met with mixed reaction throughout the housing industry.
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Whether apartment brands are ultimately super-meaningful to renters or not, branding offers a frontline opportunity to define your company and properties to consumers and employees. Still, creating and sustaining a brand identity takes a big chunk out of the marketing budget. Is it worth it?
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Some of the biggest public apartment owners in the country saw increases in move outs for homeownership in the third quarter. Add in the extension of the homebuyer tax credit and home prices continuing to decline, and it might make sense that a flood of renters move out for homeownership into 2010.
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If recent reports are correct, the foreign buyer has been making a dent in the excess inventories of major condo markets such as New York and Miami.
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MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: fundraisers, food drives, and fur ball rental protections.
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It’s official: High-rise condo buildings have joined the auction craze. While auctions to move single-family and low-rise condo communities have dominated the headlines since the housing market tanked, developers are now turning to auctions to help boost high-rise sales.
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Funds from operations (FFO), moreso than occupancy levels or net operating income (NOI), is the generally accepted measure of operating performance for real estate investment trusts. And in the third quarter of 2009, with unemployment mounting, apartment REITs saw their FFO take a hit. Here is a ranking of the REITs with the highest FFO for the third quarter.
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Current multifamily starts by regional operators we’ll likely hit the market just ahead of stock getting ready to be developed by some of the industry’s major realestate investment trusts (REITs), who are seeking similar opportunities in delivering product to supply-constrained markets on the upside of economic recovery.
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In a rental market that’s already been floundering for more than a year and could be headed for more problems next year, two recent announcements out of Washington, D.C., won’t help.
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Washington, D.C., is considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, housing market in the country. But three different reports show exactly how unevenly this relative prosperity is distributed throughout the nation’s capital.
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The mantra in the apartment industry this year has been to keep heads in beds. From the looks of the third quarter results, it looks as though the REITs are leading the way. All 12 major apartment REITs reported occupancies above 93 percent.
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Carrollton, Texas-based RealPage announced its acquisition of San Francisco-based Propertyware this week, an announcement that had been expected for several weeks as the companies were finalizing details of the deal, the terms of which were not publicized.
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The $3 billion mortgage for the troubled Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in New York was transferred into special servicing with Needham, Mass.-based CWCapital last week.
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The industry may be unprepared for a break of the vast amounts of personal data collected by multifamily companies on residents and employees alike that remains unsecured in either electronic databases or as paper hard copies.
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Following on the heels of the departure of CFO Tom Herzog earlier this year, Denver-based AIMCO announced additional personnel changes last week.
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Multifamily firms are working harder than ever to lock in renewals, due in large part to downward pressure on rents for new leases and weaker occupancies. Seasoned property management vets from progressive multifamily firms say there are plenty of tools to keep loyal residents happy and coming back for more at the conclusion of their lease. Here are the top 10 tactics suggested by a panel of industry experts who are revving up their renewals.
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Multifamily operators and property managers continue to grapple with lead-to-lease tracking accompanying the explosion in Internet marketing of apartment communities.
MULTIFAMILY EXECUTIVE Senior Editor Chris Wood rounds up interesting and intriguing news tidbits. This week: lyrical lofts, bats in the bedroom, and on-site operations for idiots.
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The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University has released a study showing the effects of housing vouchers on welfare families. Among a wide range of findings, the study shows vouchers had the strongest effect on improving neighborhood quality for those initially in the poorest neighborhoods, especially those living in public housing.
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All but 12 communities nationwide saw declines in construction employment between September 2008 and September 2009 according to a new analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) of metropolitan area employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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"Bay Area Burden" report and companion housing and transportation calculator revealed in call for better integration of housing, land use, and transit policy to encourage multifamily-type development near job centers and transportation nodes.
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When eight bidders were jockeying to get a slice of Corus’ assets back in September, there was hope that the transfer of the failed Chicago-based lender’s assets would set a bottom in some markets. But it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.
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If a recent Rutgers report is true, it could be awhile before apartment owners see fundamentals bounce back to where they were just a few years ago. Despite projections that the nation may be emerging from the recession, the report's authors (and Rutgers professors) don’t think jobs will return to 2007 levels anytime soon.
Last week, Columbia, Md.-based nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners committed $4 billion to accelerate green affordable housing through the launch of the next generation of its Green Communities Initiative. Enterprise’s funding will help create, preserve, or retrofit 75,000 green homes and community and commercial buildings within the next five years.
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New York-based Reis says that apartment vacancies have hit record highs and will move higher. Conversely, RealFacts, a Novato, Calif.-based apartment data provider, saw occupancies rise in 29 of the 33 MSAs it covered in its third-quarter report. Neither of the conflicting reports, however, indicates when rents will stop their downward slide.
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Although students seem to want to cozy up with friends who unabashedly promote the residence life component of their property, the days of bunking up as study buddies in a single room seem to be coming to a close.
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North Carolina recently added affordable housing as a protected class in its fair housing law. A diverse team of affordable housing advocates and housing associations pushed the bill as a way to prevent local government discrimination against affordable housing and stimulate new development interest in the sector.
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Earlier this week, UDR was the first REIT to declare its third-quarter earnings. The numbers surprised some analysts. Fundamentals are weakening, but the firm still held occupancies above 95 percent in all four regions. Its revenue came in line with forecasts from Robert W. Baird & Co., a Milwaukee-based wealth management, capital markets, asset management, and private equity firm, but its operating line was better than some analysts expected thanks to some cost savings.
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Anant Yardi of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Yardi Systems sits down with Multifamily Executive to discuss social media, competitive advantage, and the very evolution of multifamily technology itself.
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The ever-opportunistic Pierce Ledbetter, CEO of LEDIC Management, sometimes starts scouting distressed properties to manage before their banks even really know how much trouble they’re in. LEDIC applies to a subscription service that lists loans in a given zip code. Once the property’s loan is more than 30 days past due, LEDIC starts doing a market study and taking photos have an archive of physical appearance over time.