REGIONAL MARKETS: SOUTHEAST

APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY • FEBRUARY 2008

Southeast At-A-Glance

ATLANTA

Buy low, sell high.
Looks like savvy investors are taking the classic investment advice in Atlanta, pooling their cash to swoop in and snap up multifamily properties—in addition to taking on some new development—while prices are depressed and the meltdown in the single-family housing market threatens to push increasing numbers of residents toward rental housing. In early December, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that as much as $1.9 billion from three different investment/development groups was poised to enter the metro’s apartment market. Considering the state of the market these days, our guess is they’ll be taking Warren Buffett’s advice next: Buy and hold.

MIAMI

A mixed picture.
Income and job growth are expected to pick up slightly in 2008 in this metro, perhaps partly because Florida’s population growth rate fell by more than a third in 2007. What does this mean for the apartment market? Slumping condo and single-family home prices are creating a shadow market of rentals, but with incomes still well below housing prices, there’s still a big opportunity down the quality chain, in Class B and C properties. Plus, research provider Reis, Inc., is projecting rent growth of 6.3 percent through the third quarter of this year—more than two percentage points above the U.S. average.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

Normally, the lynx has a range that stretches across almost all of North America.
In this Southern banking center, though, its eponymous hightech counterpart, the newly opened LYNX light-rail system, is prompting an apartment explosion. About 4,000 units are planned along the rail line, most in the city’s now-redeveloping old industrial area, known as the South End. Two more rail lines are in the planning stages and could get built over the next decade. By that point, there may be no room left in this boomtown for the flesh-and-blood lynx.