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Downward pressure on rent prices is causing a “cascade” effect across all unit types. Whether you live in a luxury apartment or budget-friendly multifamily building on a busy street, you’ve probably seen asking rents lowering around you with apartment concession offers in many leasing offices. With multifamily supply hitting “peak completions,” apartment operators have had to tackle rising vacancy rates by lowering rents. But this trend could be reversing soon, just as things were getting more affordable for renters.

Jay Parsons, rental housing economist, spends much of his day searching through rental data to find trends pointing to what could happen next. We’ve brought him on to understand why rents are dropping, where they could be heading, and what happens now that multifamily construction is starting to pause.

Jay speaks on the rebounding rental demand that’s starting to show, why our “oversupply” of multifamily could quickly become a shortage, which apartment classes are seeing significant rent price discounts, and whether or not these problems could spill over into the single-family rental market. Plus, Jay gives his outlook for the next few years on whether or not rent growth will reaccelerate as multifamily construction starts fall significantly.

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Dave:

On today’s show, we’re digging into a pretty big can of worms in the housing market, which is all about rental inventory. The question is what inventory do renters need and want versus what is actually available right now? And can investors take the data available to them to try and fill a gap in the market, or at least recognize when pursuing multifamily or certain types of asset classes? Does it make sense in today’s market?

Hey everyone, and welcome to On The Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, and today we are bringing on in my world, what you would consider a superstar. I understand that most people may not think of as economists, as celebrities, but for me, Jay Parsons, who’s our guest today, is a very big name and I’m super excited to have him on the show. Jay has spent his entire career focusing on multifamily and rental housing economics, so we really couldn’t get a better guess to cover this topic. And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about multifamily supply from the pandemic and how it’s impacting today’s market. We’ll talk about what supply we have coming online in conjunction with how demand has shifted, and if those things are moving in the same direction, Jay and I are also going to talk about whether there’s a mismatch problem. And lastly, we’ll also look to the future and talk about what to expect in the coming years in terms of multifamily demand, rent, growth, and profits. Alright, let’s bring on Jay. Jay, welcome to On the Market. Thanks for joining us today.

Jay:

Thanks for having me. Dave. Before

Dave:

We dig into the specifics of the rental market, I wanted to take a step back and sort of look at how we got here. So can you give us a brief history lesson in how rental demand has really started to shift and some of those trends from the beginning of the pandemic to now?

Jay:

Sure. Yeah, so just setting the stage a little bit, that 2010s decade was just very steady. We saw steady amount of supply, steady amount of demand, a little more demand than supply. And so vacancy was slowly going down, but rent growth was kind of consistent in a stabilized range. And then the pandemic hits this brief disruption where obviously there’s a period where no one’s really moving at all. But then within a couple of months of the pandemic, all of a sudden we saw just really remarkable rebound and demand. And at the time, no one knew it was sustainable or not, but it just kept coming and then coming. And so initially we saw some very challenging issues in certain parts of the country, particularly downtowns of large coastal cities, but the rest of the country was doing fine and then rent started rebound. 2021 was the best year for apartment van we ever saw in single family rentals the same way.

So that’s when we started to see these double digit rent hikes that we hadn’t seen since the 1970s. And then by really going into the leasing season, the spring and summer of 2022, things started to slow down. Inflation started to rip up across the economy, not just rents, but obviously everything. And I think there’s a lot of sticker shock going on that slowed down household formation and that really continued. At the same time, we had a lot of supply hitting the market because all this stuff built post covid or started since covid, and that’s what’s really hitting now. And then standing here now we’re starting to now finally see as inflation’s cooled off, we’ve seen over these last six, nine months or so, a very strong rebounded demand again. So as you started us off with, it’s been a little bit of a roller coaster, but at least in terms of demand, I think we’re back on the upswing.

Dave:

Thanks for that overview. I want to just jump into the quick rebound that you alluded to. Can you give us an idea of why demand spiked so high during the pandemic? Was it just demographics?

Jay:

Yeah, I think it’s a lot of things. Some people just want demographics. I hear a lot of people say, Hey, it’s just stimulus money out there, a lot of free money. Everyone’s out there moving around. But I think it was several things including those factors. I mean, first of all, demographics, to your point, Dave, were very favorable. We still are seeing a lot of, while the number of people turning 25 every day, that number is not as big as the growth rate I should say, wasn’t what it was 10 years ago is still very, very good. And so you have a lot of people entering the prime adult stage of life, apartment renting stage of life, excuse me. At the same time, I think what we saw during the pandemic is people working from home and all of a sudden we saw this phenomenon of decoupling roommates, people who’d been living together now at nighttime, now also in the daytime, and they realized they need a little more space. And we saw that particularly in class, a higher end part of the market. And then also just the rapid job growth and wage growth that we saw people were in better shape to be able to do that. And I think we saw more young adults leaving the nest as well. So it was kind of multiple things happening at the same time.

Dave:

And at what point during this timeline of increased demand did supply start to increase?

Jay:

Yeah, so initially when covid hit, we saw some of the construction projects were paused briefly. Ultimately they got going again. But in 2020 was a tough time to get new projects approved and funded and started just because of the uncertainty of the pandemic. But by the end of 2020 and then definitely in the 2021, it became very clear that demand was real and that rents are recovering again. And that’s when we really saw this rapid growth in permitting and starts. And so 21 and 2022, we saw again kind of peak starts, and then by the time we got 2023 that really started to slow down and even more dramatically here in 2024. But as you know, Dave starting and finishing, there’s a big gap. And so depending on the size of the project and location, that could be 12 to 24 months. And so even though starts have slowed down dramatically, we’re still experiencing peak completions

Dave:

Is that increase in supply. You said peak completions. And for anyone who hasn’t looked at some of Jay’s work, you could see this in some of his reports and others out there, you could just look at the amount of apartments that have been delivered over the decades and you can see that we really are at all time highs and I recommend you go check that out because it really informs a lot of what’s going on. And is that really the main reason why rents have stagnated or even declined a bit in the last year or so?

Jay:

Absolutely. There’s a strong relationship between where rents are falling and where supply is going. It’s interesting, I hear all the theories about, hey, rents are slowing because they overheated and whatnot. And I’ve looked at this every single way. You could look at even at a submarket level, like a neighborhood level where rents increased the most and during the pandemic and post pandemic years to what rents are doing now, there’s a much weaker relationship than there is to supply. It’s really all about supply and it’s just not that complicated. And even to that point, some of the places seeing the biggest rent cuts, places like Austin and parts of Florida and Phoenix, and these are all areas that have seen some of the best demand in terms of net new demand coming into the market. And so this isn’t like 2020 San Francisco, New York where there was real demand issues. This is a very different issue where there’s a short term influx of supply that exceeds the market’s ability to absorb it. Now, long term that’ll balance out, but in the short term, that’s creating a very favorable environment for renters.

Dave:

We do have to take a quick break, but more from Jay when we return. Welcome back to the show. Let’s jump back in. I do want to get back to that idea of the long-term implications of this, but just want to stick a little bit on what’s happening here today. And so we’re getting this influx of supply. From my understanding, it’s pretty concentrated. This isn’t a national phenomenon, but rather there are several markets, not several, but the overbuilding glut of supply is concentrated in certain regions or certain markets. Is that right?

Jay:

Yeah, I think it’s a little bit nuanced, but generally, I mean the biggest numbers are certainly in some of these high growth sunbelt markets, but I’ll tell you Dave, even I’ll take places like Los Angeles and Seattle, certain parts of the east coast as well. I mean there’s parts of these metro areas that are also seeing multi-decade highs in supply. So it’s a little more localized in some parts of the country compared to a place like the most extreme one that gets highlighted a lot is Austin, Texas where there’s apartment construction everywhere and there’s some pretty phenomenal growth numbers on the supply side. So it’s really far exceeding what can be absorbed even in a hot growth market like Austin.

Dave:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because obviously people got really excited about some of the demographics and some of the sort of economic fundamentals and that’s why they’re building so much. And is there any theme among these deliveries in terms of the quality class type of property?

Jay:

Sure, so one of the things that I’ve ended up spending a lot of time, my time doing is a lot of people out there have a hard time understanding why most of look’s Bill is pretty similar. And to your question, Dave, a lot of it is what we industry would call class A, and that means generally you’re nicer, more luxury apartments. In fact, the joke in the industry is that luxury is just, it’s a marketing term that really doesn’t mean anything these days because everybody’s got granite countertops, everybody’s got nice flooring and washer dryers in the unit and these kind of things these days and dog parks on the property. And so all the things. And so we’ve kind of commoditized luxury for apartments, but the reality is that when you build really any type of real estate rental real estate, you got to be able to generate an income from that property that offsets the costs required to build that property. And most of the costs are associated with the land construction, labor development fees, their hard costs. And so even if you want to build affordable, your costs don’t dramatically go down. And so because of that, most of what’s getting built today is pretty similar.

Dave:

It’s really fascinating because basically what you’re saying, the discount that you get on building a class B property, class C property, and I guess the land acquisition costs, permanent costs, some of those are permanent costs. Things are the same no matter what you’re building, but given pricing today, it just becomes non economical for developers to build class B or class C properties. And is this happening basically everywhere? We’re just seeing the same product reproduced in all these major metros,

Jay:

And I guess I’m being a little tongue in cheek by saying it’s all commoditized and the same, but I like to say we’ve kind commoditized unique. Everybody’s got a unique little thing going, but it’s all geared toward the same renter profile. Now, one thing I will say is just building that point earlier though, is that I think people have to, number two is like a land seller is not going to discount your land. You want to build affordable, the construction workers aren’t going to work for cheaper because you want to build affordable. And so when you build affordable housing, it usually comes with some type of subsidy to the developer or an owner, which is for example, the low income housing tax credit, which is essentially reduced tax burden. So things like that which come in exchange for keeping your rents lower. In a lot of states, by the way, your property taxes are your largest expense. And so if you can reduce that, it’s a good way for policymakers to encourage affordable housing. But outside of that, there are some examples of some developers who are building some class B and it’s very kind of unique style where it’s like bulk buy of materials and literally building this exact same thing everywhere they go. So but still a lot more work that needs to be done to bring down the cost of construction. We’ve

Dave:

Talked a lot on this show about mismatch supply and demand, particularly when it comes to starter homes. It sounds like in rents and particularly multifamily rents, we have perhaps a similar situation going on where the amount of units a lot, but it’s just not the right type of units for the demand in each property class tier. Is that sort of a correct summary?

Jay:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think this is a very complex issue where there’s sort of two competing realities. Number one, I think to your point is when people talk about housing shortage, the biggest shortage of housing is at the lowest end of the income spectrum. And so that is a problem that’s been very, very tough to meet. Now, on the other side of this, I think everyone’s been surprised by the depth of demand for higher income, higher rent housing, and even there’s a Harvard Joint Center for housing studies, which I think is a group that does some pretty good, very good unbiased research for the most part, they have some great research showing that the vast majority of rent household formation over the last decade has really been households with $75,000 and above incomes. It’s not your lower income households, but that’s a function also of the supply is being built.

And so I’m trying to answer your question this way saying I think what’s happened right so far is we’ve seen there’s been enough upper income households that were living in middle income rental properties. So basically properties they could afford to rent more, but they lived in something that was a little bit cheaper and they’re moving up and they’re filling these new units that are being discounted today and they can afford it. And that’s opening up some availability at the middle income prices, I should say the middle tier prices for middle income households. But so we’re kind of meeting that need in a different way, which is a process that academics call filtering, which is that you feel moving from one stage to the next and instead of building low income and middle income housing, we’re having higher income households moving out of that stuff so that others can move into it.

Dave:

Wow. So does that mean that the downward pressure on rents will sort of cascade downhill? It sort of started at class A because there’s an oversupply, but now as those people filter or move up, then the downward pressure will go to class B and then to class C?

Jay:

Yeah, that’s what happened. In fact, I’ve been very public about this. My biggest, I think, forecasting miss of last year was I was of the view and very strongly that these what we’d call class B, class C, these middle and moderate income rent properties, that they would be relatively insulated from this massive supply wave because the rents are just so much cheaper than today’s new construction. In many markets it was a 30 40% discount. And so it just seemed like it was too much to be overcome with just, Hey, here’s one two months free, or here’s we’re going to cut rents by five 10%. It was just too much. But again, I was wrong. What’s happened is that we’ve seen, again, these upper income households that were living in those properties that have moved up and that’s created pressure, as you pointed out, downward pressure on pricing even in those class B and class C apartments.

And the challenge is you get down the spectrum like class C will be considered to be your cheapest market rate apartments, meaning there’s no subsidy. This is just true market rate apartments. They’re having to cut rents even more in these high supplied areas than the class A. And the reason is because they’ve got to then bring in people who previously didn’t even qualify for market rate housing. So it’s a bigger impact only in these high supplied areas, by the way, if it’s in a low supply area, this is not true. But in these ultra high supplied areas, they’re having to cut rents the most in many cases.

Dave:

Its interesting because it seems like in the short term this probably benefits, like you said, lower income folks who are now getting to move up, but if your earlier tease that this is short-lived, it comes true, then perhaps this is just going to unwind itself and people will have to move and reshuffle again in a few years when supply and demand fall into better balance.

Jay:

Yeah, well, I think there’s that risk. I mean, there’s a few things I would say is number one is that one tailwind has been, we continue to see that younger workers have fared economically better than older workers in this last cycle here. So meaning you look at wage growth by age, it’s strongest in the traditional apartment demographic, these twenties and 30 somethings. So that’s a good thing to see even at the service job level that would fill these Class B and C apartments. And so if that continues, we see incomes growing faster than the rents, and that’s a good tailwind. Now the other thing I’d point out though is that there’s been a lot of focus on rates obviously, and there’s a very clear consequence to keeping rates higher that I think the fed’s very well aware of, but it’s now harder to build new properties.

And so getting to your point, your question, Dave, is that now starts are dropping off because essentially the mortgage rate, the developer has to, has gone up, they can’t cover that with the rents that are now flat to falling. And so that leads to fewer starts. So the industry consensus at this point, which I would generally align with is that barring some black swan event, we could quickly be back in a undersupply situation within a couple of years. And to your point, that would I think lead to declining vacancies and reacceleration of rents again. So I don’t think a double digits like peak inflation type numbers, but I do think that’s a very plausible scenario.

Dave:

Just seems like the pendulum is just swinging very far in each direction right now, and we’ll have to see how that spells out. Last question about this is just do you think that this oversupply also spills into the residential sector? Because as an analyst, the commercial real estate data, residential real estate data are often separated, but I’m just curious your opinion in these oversupplied markets with this downward pressure on rent, is it going to impact the single family rental or the duplex that a smaller mom and pop investor might own?

Jay:

I think a single family rentals are in the short term better positioned because we’ve actually seen erosion of single family rental supply in most markets. In fact, it always baffles me, sees headlines about becoming a rent nation and whatnot, and people don’t realize homeownership rate’s been going up and actually when you look, people look at institutional investors and whatnot, but they miss the fact that the census data shows that individual home buyers have gained a lot more market share than investors over the last 7, 8, 9 years. And so there’s a shrinking stock of single Alan rentals. You see some, there’s a lot of focus as you probably know about construction, these build to rent single family communities, but honestly, it’s still a drop in the bucket in the big picture. It’s tiny. And so I think in terms of answering your question, I think the impact is really when you have apartment renters who are now aging out of apartments, you get married having kids, most apartments are not built for raising kids. That’s why you see very few playgrounds in today’s apartments. It’s not catering to that demographic. And so if they can’t buy a house, it’s all of a sudden renting a single of filling home may be the best alternative. And so I dunno if that answers your question, but I think that’s where we’re going to potentially see more opportunity in sfr.

Dave:

That makes a lot of sense. Again, it sort of goes to this idea of where the demand is, and like you said, that there might continue to be demand there. So thank you for explaining that. It’s something I just personally think a lot about and I do appreciate you bringing up two really important statistics there. One is that, yes, that home ownership rate is pretty much in line with long-term averages and it never fluctuates that much. I think it stays between like 63 and 69% for the last 50 years, and we’re right in the middle of that. So that’s absolutely just headline nonsense with the renter nation thing. And then secondly, the idea of institutional investors, and I know it is scary and you see these numbers, I think that’s sort of when you see these dollar amounts, it’s like black students investing a billion dollars, but when you think about what percentage of single family homes a billion dollars buys, especially on a national basis, even in a single metro area, it’s really just not that much.

And so you sort of have to zoom out and really think about the massive, massive size of the entire residential real estate market and a billion dollars, although a ton of money to an individual or an investment firm, not that big in the terms of the size of the housing market. Yeah. One chart in a recent report you put out, Jay, that I was really happy you shared was this chart that details that wage growth is actually outpacing rent growth right now. And so that basically means that despite it being a challenging economic time, rent on a national level is actually getting more affordable for people over the last year. Is that right?

Jay:

Yeah. This is something that I, as a research nerd, just a pet peeve of mine, as I see these headlines, they’ll take say data from Zillow and they’ll mash it up with data from the government’s bureau, labor statistics on incomes. And it drives me crazy because these are apples and oranges. It’s like what you’re looking at is income for the entire population versus a skewed sample set that’s being listed on one website, right? And this is not, what you have to look at is who is renting and what are they paying to rent? And so you look at those kind of data sets, the publicly traded reach report on this, both SFR and multifamily, some of the private data collectors have this information. And when you look at this, it’s very clear that at least on the new lease side, that we’re at a year and a half in of seeing wages that are growing faster than rent.

So rent income ratios are coming back down, and the market rate apartments, that number has been around the 22%. It’s been 22, 20 3% level I believe. You look at some of the SFR REITs, they’ve been reporting similar low 20% range. Again, there’s this competing narrative mentioned earlier was that yes, we have a lot of people who are struggling to get by and that doesn’t, I wanted always be very sensitive to that. But you look at who lives in these properties that we’re talking about, they’re generally upper middle income and upper income renters. And so because of that, we’ve seen some, I think, strong resiliency in these numbers.

Dave:

We do have to take one final break, but stick with us. You won’t want to miss the final points that Jay has. And while we’re away, make sure to search for on the market on your favorite podcast app and click that follow button so you never miss an episode of the show. Welcome back to On the Market. So Jay, I’m curious if you think this will actually further increase demand because we’re in this situation where home affordability is at 40 year lows and is at least to date only gotten worse in 2024 with home prices increasing four or 5% depending on who you ask. And so renting for a year or two now has already been cheaper and relative to buying a home, it’s now becoming an even better financial proposition.

Jay:

Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career at telling people that Renton calculators are nonsense, and that first and foremost, this is a lifestyle decision, not a financial one. And I still think that for the most part, I’ve only met one person in my life who actually made a truly only financial decision and wasn’t factoring in life stage. And this guy was somebody who’s extremely analytical and quantitative, and so just thought that way, but most of us are not that way. Most of us factor in some, there’s some emotional and lifestyle preference that factors into it. Now, that said, at some point, buying a house and not just buying a house, but buying what you want and where you want it, which is always another piece of this, because not everybody just wants to buy a house, they want to be in a certain area and a certain type of house, a certain size, certain age, certain condition, all of those things matter.

I think at some point, as rates linger where they are, it just becomes obviously difficult. And you look at what’s happening with, I wrote about this recently, the single family REITs, the multifamily REITs, and their last ending calls. I think every single one of ’em, maybe let me just caveat this, say, I think nearly every one of them said that their move outs to home purchase were at all time lows just because the obstacles have gotten too difficult with sticky home prices and high mortgage rates. So it is a real factor, I think of it more as temporary. I think ultimately people who want to become homeowners are going to, and I also think that a nation where homeownership is still viewed as the American dream, I think we’re going to see more creative programs to incentivize home ownership. But at least in the short term, again, I think single-family rentals are well positioned as a beneficiary because people are going to age out of apartments. Some of ’em will stick around, but a lot of ’em are going to still want to be in a single-family home and may just want to rent in a neighborhood where they can’t afford to buy yet. I

Dave:

Really appreciate you saying that because this is a debate and sort of a history of economics, but a lot of economists like to treat people as perfectly rational financial decision makers, which is just not, and they’re not reality. And you can explain math to people, and even as someone who’s very analytical myself, there is a certain amount of satisfaction or comfort that comes with owning your own home that just doesn’t come down to dollars and cents. And although that probably makes people like your jobs Jay harder because you can’t quantify that perfectly. It is definitely something that you need to factor into sort of the dynamics and psychology that’s driving the market today.

Jay:

Oh, absolutely. So

Dave:

Jay, let’s look a little bit of the future. We talked a little bit about growth in supply and that you alluded to earlier that you think this is sort of a short term situation. Can you speak more about that?

Jay:

Yeah, so it’s funny, we were talking about oversupply earlier. It’s like I hate that word oversupply because I think it implies this structural imbalance. And the reality is supply has always been cyclical, and that’s single family, multifamily, everything. It comes in waves. And inevitably the waves are never timed correctly with demand. And that’s just because it takes time. Once you get projects that are designed and approved and funded and then built, it’s going to be a year or two before that actually hits the ground. And at that point, the demand environment can change. And so again, that’s where we at now. So what’s happened is in many markets starts are now down 40, 50 plus percent in terms of multifamily, and that inevitably is going to point to much less supply hitting the market by second half of next year into 26 and 27. And so the dynamics of it, to get fairly high level here, but a little more specific is number one, there’s a loss fly in the market, and so it’s harder to get new projects approved.

Number two, rates are flat to falling in most markets, which means that for a developer, your rents are not where you need to usually offset the costs that you have, especially now that the debt costs are what they are. Typically construction debt’s paid with floating rate debt, and that’s obviously very expensive right now. And so the only way to overcome that is with rents that are higher. But if for a developer, they have to look at what the comps are. So if I have a comparable property that’s renting for less than what I need to justify that construction, then I’m not going to be able to find equity and debt partners to fund that new project. One of the things I hear on social media a lot people don’t understand is like builders, developers, they don’t build with their own money. They have to raise capital, they need to talk, they need to get equity investors and lenders to give them money to build these projects. So because of that, it’s tough because for these investors, they are seeing better return opportunities buying an existing property today than investing in building a new one. And that dynamic won’t last forever. But for those reasons, it’s just I’m above view. I think supply is going to be below long-term trend levels in 26 and 27. And

Dave:

How do you think that plays out in terms of long-term rent growth? Because we’re sort of in this flat stage and it sounds like things will even out, and I’m wondering if does this set up a situation where rent growth could really reaccelerate in a significant way in 2, 3, 4 years down the line?

Jay:

Well, first of all, the caveat here is no one really knows what can happen two, three years from now, I supply is the easiest thing to forecast. I know there’ll be less supply. That supply just starts push forward, right? The other side of the fair variable is demand side. That’s much harder forecast. So lemme put out this saying, assuming there’s no black swan event, assuming there’s no recession, if we continue on a moderate growth path or if a faster growth path, you’re going to see demand exceeds supply again. And in that scenario, you’re going to see, I mean, rents are a function of supply and demand. And so in that scenario, you would see rents accelerate. Now, again, I don’t personally think we’d get back to these crazy numbers we saw in 21 and 22, but I think a mid single digit expectation would be quite reasonable and long term we’re traditionally two to 4% range, just again, round numbers a year. I think you can make a case that we can be four to 6% range once we get past this current supply wave.

Dave:

Yeah. I’m sorry to make you forecast JI know it’s always not a position that people want to be put in, but it’s what the people want on the podcast. So I got to at least ask, understand you a question, understand, and you put a more concrete answer on it than some might be daring to do. There some

Jay:

Caveats.

Dave:

Yeah, no one knows for sure, but I think you said it well that that case could be made. It is definitely something that there is a reasonable probability of occurring. Jay, this has been super helpful. Is there anything I missed? Is there anything else you think our audience of real estate investors should know from your work in research about the multifamily market and rents?

Jay:

No. Well, I guess the only thing, we’re talking a lot about supply risk. I think the other thing that’s really a factor right now in rental housing, both for SFR and multifamily is the regulatory side. And I think we’re seeing is that coming out of the pandemic, we’ve just seen a more of intensified policy spotlight on rental housing. And so I think one factor that investors have to really factor in these days is the local dynamics of the individual municipalities in which they’re investing. And I think that’s one that’s going to be a really emerging risk in certain markets to watch for, just

Dave:

Like government policy, just policy and regulatory risk.

Jay:

So regulatory risk can mean all kinds of things. I mean, obviously things like rent controls, which we’ve seen in proposed or tightened in many parts of the, I shouldn’t say many, really, a handful of parts of the country despite the abundance of evidence showing how it backfires long-term when the very renters are trying to protect. But also we’re seeing other things like there’s been some areas to eliminate or highly restrict background checks, which is a little bit mind boggling just because criminal background checks are primarily intended not to protect the landlord’s income stream, but to protect the residents in that community. I think personally, I think that if you share a wall with somebody in particular, you should know that the person next to you has been properly vetted. And then if there’s problems occurring on the site, you want to be able to know that person can be removed.

I mean, I’ll tell you a heartbreaking story. I heard recently, I was in Minneapolis meeting with a group out there about the local apartment owners and they were sharing some stories about these were lower income properties and they had open drug trading, open prostitution, and the police wouldn’t do anything about it. And it was happening is they had actual residents talk about a single mother trying to raise two kids in this environment, and the property manager had held this poor woman, look, we can’t do anything to help you. And so that type of stuff, number one, it’s a tough operating environment, but number two, it puts you as a property owner in a very, very difficult position when you can’t remove people who are causing problems in the community or you have rental restrictions or eviction restrictions that then impact your revenue stream. You can’t maintain your property to the level you need to. And so there are some real considerations that you really have to kind of factor in that may not have been as big of a, and this is both SFR and multifamily by the way. So considerations that may not have been a factor 10 years ago or a much bigger thing. Now,

Dave:

Just another reminder that everything in real estate is local, and we talk a lot on the show about looking up data, but this just shows some of the non-quantifiable more qualitative evaluations are just as important as some of the numbers behind rent trends and housing trends. Because of course, these types of policy decisions are going to have a huge implication on the performance of your portfolio and how you need to manage your business. So thank you for that. Really helpful reminder, Jay, and thank you on a broader level for sharing all your knowledge and research with us. Jay, we really appreciate it. If you want to connect with Jay, read any of his really fascinating reports, we’ll put links to all that in the show notes below. Thanks again, Jay.

Jay:

Thank you for having me

Dave:

On. The market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content, and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.

Watch the Episode Here

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In This Episode We Cover

  • A rental demand update and why rent prices are getting more affordable
  • What’s causing the recent demand rebound in the multifamily rental market?
  • Why our multifamily “oversupply” could quickly vanish and create a new problem
  • Growing demand for single-family rentals and why these investors may be in a better position
  • When rent growth could reaccelerate and supply could shrink once again
  • One growing risk multifamily investors must be aware of when choosing a market
  • And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Connect with Jay:

Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected].

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.

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