What’s Ahead in 2009?
There has been a lot of gloom and doom this year, but opportunities were still found. The November/December issue of Apartment Finance Today features some of the top deals of 2008. Despite the credit crunch, both large and creative transactions did happen. Many of those deals did close in the first half of the year before lenders grew more cautious, but they all showed innovation as well as lot of hard work.

What will 2009 bring for the multifamily industry? According to Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2009, a report released in October by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the financial and real estate markets will bottom out in 2009 and continue to flounder in 2010. But the report shows some brighter spots for the multifamily industry. It lists the apartment market as the No. 1 “buy” due to distress in the single-family market. And real estate experts believe moderate-income apartments in core urban areas near mass transit offer the best value. The apartment market also takes the report’s top position among the property sectors most promising for investment.

Apartment Finance Today will shed more light on what’s ahead in the new year in the January/February issue’s Capital Markets Outlook. If you would like to share your perspective on what’s ahead for the industry in this issue, please e-mail me at cserlin@hanleywood.com.