APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY

Shabnam Mogharabi, Editor
smogharabi@hanleywood.com

We have no job growth. No rebound in rents. No flood of distressed assets hitting the market. No loosening of lending requirements. Yet at the NMHC Annual Meeting last week, cautious optimism abounded. I couldn’t imagine where the positive energy was coming from. Wishful thinking perhaps? Or was I just ignorant of a real estate recovery just around the corner?

Maybe a little of both, one executive told me. “The only reason people are optimistic is because they see that occupancies and rents have stopped spiraling downward. Otherwise, not a whole lot else has changed,” said the CEO of a large third-party management firm. True, I thought. And simultaneously, there are indications that transactions may start to see greater traction in 2010. From an acquisitions perspective, most lenders these days still require “skin in the game”—not a problem considering the undeployed capital currently sitting on the sidelines—but their requirements are not insurmountable. In fact, lenders seem more willing to dish out dough than they have in the past six months.

If that is enough to build a case for optimism about 2010, then so be it. I guess I’ll just have to keep my skepticism to myself.

If you thought the multifamily industry bottomed out in 2009, hold on to your hats. The murky depths of the Great Recession are still to come. It could be another few quarters before the multifamily industry reaches the bottom of the current cycle, according to several recent reports.
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While the market for low-income housing tax credits remains depressed, some big buyers are starting to re-engage the market. Unfortunately, as the tax-credit exchange program gathers steam, many developers are finding that the biggest impediment to breaking ground is finding the debt.
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Throughout 2009, multifamily borrowers enjoyed sub-6 percent rates from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as other commercial real estate sectors struggled to find well-priced debt. But if current trends hold up, those rates may be tough to find in 2010.
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Deals in Southern California, Portland highlight firm’s penchant for newly constructed assets in high-barrier-to-entry markets, even as additional players join the acquisition fracas.
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Judge Robert Kwan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Central District of California approved a deal last week that allows a private equity firm to acquire three Bethany Group multifamily portfolios out of Chapter 11.
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The Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty joint venture that acquired the now-embattled Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village property in New York for $5.6 billion in 2006 didn’t apply for $1.5 billion in TALF support for the property from the New York Federal Reserve, but somebody did.
FULL ARTICLE

In a move that caps five years of frenzied expansion, FirstService Real Estate Advisors and Colliers International have combined their operations and global real estate services platforms.
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APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY

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HOUSING FINANCE BLOG

Read about deals, subsidies, gossip, taxes, and sneaky fine print in the world of rental real estate, from the editors and writers of APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY here.

To reach APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY Editor Shabnam Mogharabi, please e-mail smogharabi@hanleywood.com

To reach APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY online Web Producer Spencer Markey,
e-mail smarkey@hanleywood.com

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