Business Specialties
Finance Trends: Multifamily Finance Trends and HUD
While much chatter across the industry speculates as to a current or future bubble, economic indicators show that the sector continues to show strength and that a bubble is not imminent. Investors and developers are active, and demand for units remains steady.
Renters’ Choice: Green Living
The multifamily industry overall has embraced the green movement and made great strides in recent years; but, some apartment communities are doing better than others. This month, MHN partnered with Kingsley Associates to see what residents are saying about their communities’ green features. Electric car charging, drought-resistant landscaping and better insulation are just three features that residents would like to see more of.
Executive Insight: Youthful Insight
Low Income Housing Tax Credit specialists WNC & Associates may have more than 40 years of experience in the affordable housing industry, but the firm isn’t afraid to put youth in the driver’s seat of its rapidly expanding subsidiary, Community Preservation Partners LLC (CPP).
Development & Design: What’s ‘New’ in New Urbanism
While New Urbanist developments are not the only types of multi-housing projects that are being built today, the movement’s precepts have swept the industry over the past 20 years or more, and become common wisdom among multifamily developers, big and small alike.
Operations: Green Insurance
Building and operating green multifamily buildings is not only a sound practice from a societal standpoint, it is a smart move from a business point of view. Increasingly, owners and managers view buildings that are green as both more cost-efficient and more attractive to potential renters and buyers.
Products & Services: Green Revolution
Large-scale green building materials companies seem to be burgeoning in the U.S. green construction market, and it is important to note that often, the greenest building supplies are those that come from vendors near the source of a project. Reclaimed materials such as lumber can be repurposed for a variety of different uses including siding, fencing and flooring, just as chunks of ripped out sidewalk from a municipal project can be re-used as retaining walls or stepping stones for pathways.
Cover Story: Green Amenities
Light glistens off of the dew drops that have collected on the rough tops of blue-green Lacinato kale leaves revealing tiny rainbows as it refracts the sun’s rays. A few feet away, fava bean seedlings have pushed through the overwinter compost and have begun their ascent to maturity, and by harvest time they will have helped fix enough nitrogen into the soil to fuel next season’s rotation of leafy greens like rainbow chard, arugula and New Zealand spinach.
Finance: GSE Reform-What’s Next
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done considerably better than expected since going into government conservatorship in 2008, even as the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has attempted to restrict their activities.
Market Report: The Big Apple is Tasty
New York City multifamily assets saw aggressively higher prices throughout all submarkets and pricing metrics in 2013 as demand, driven by rising rents and low interest rates, continued to outpace supply. Average capitalization rates dropped while gross rent multiples, prices per square foot, and prices per unit rose.
TODAY’S DEALS: Luxury NYC Adaptive Reuse Sells of $126M
Eastern Consolidated arranges the sale of a hotel-to-apartment conversion in New York; Berkadia originates $12 million for a Seattle community; and Hendricks-Berkadia negotiates the sales of two Tampa communities for more than $10 million.