The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.

In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.

Midwestern markets will heat up, and more friends and family members will pool their money to buy homes together in 2023, as people look for new ways to overcome the housing affordability crisis. However, that crisis will stabilize — if not improve — from its pandemic-era apex. New construction will be focused on rental units, and we should see a jump in homeowners becoming first-time landlords. Those are among a slew of new predictions the Zillow Economic Research team has made for 2023. 

Beginning in 2013, the annual shipments (sales) of manufactured homes began ticking upward, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Although they decreased in 2020, likely due to the pandemic, shipments of manufactured homes bounced back with gusto in 2021 and 2022. In fact, 2021 has seen the most monthly shipments of manufactured homes since 2006.

Meanwhile, the sales of existing pre-owned site-built homes have fallen significantly as prices have eliminated many low-to-medium-income American home buyers. Those homebuyers are discovering manufactured housing to be at least equal, and often superior, in every respect, to site-built existing and newly constructed traditional homes, and will have a cost of up to 50% less. The following reflects the continuing growth and affordability of manufactured homes versus site-built homes.

Voters created new rent controls and toughened existing rules from California to Florida to Maine when they cast their ballots in elections across the country earlier this month. The stress of the coronavirus pandemic and steep rent increases in the recovery afterwards created a burst of activity that resulted in the measures.

To be sure, in most of the country, rent control measures are an exception. In fact, many statewide laws prevent local governments from creating any new rent regulations. But ballot measures approved by voters can break these barriers. Tenant advocates have also recently convinced state lawmakers in places historically associated with rent measures, like California and New York, to allow new rent control statutes. But measures were on the ballot in some unexpected places as well.

For years, RVs have been associated with retirees who spend their golden years traveling the country. But that’s changing, and real estate investors have noticed. Encouraged by these changes and seeking higher returns than those offered by traditional property types, these investors are putting more of their money toward RV parks and campgrounds.

“We have seen investor demand for outdoor hospitality properties explode as other sectors have continued to erode,” says Yogi H. Singh, partner of National Land Lease Capital (NLLC), a private investment firm that owns close to a dozen campgrounds, RV parks and marinas across the nation. “The national shortage of professionally developed, resort-quality assets, along with the high barriers to entry, provide insulation to the sector that we find attractive.”

Washington – The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) proposed a rule in the Federal Register that will increase and index loan limits under its Title 1 Manufactured Home Loan Program. The program ensures loans are used to finance manufactured homes that are titled as personal property.

FHA proposes a “data-driven methodology to calculate loan limits for the program on an annual basis.” It’s currently seeking public comment. The change was first proposed in the Biden Administration’s May 2022 Housing Supply Action  Plan. Manufactured housing is considered one of the tools that can alleviate the U.S. shortage of affordable housing.

Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped a much worse-than-expected 10.2% in September from August, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Economists had predicted a 4% decline. Sales were down 31% year over year.

After more than doubling this year, mortgage rates are expected to retreat in 2023, according to an updated forecast from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

MBA’s economists also said they expect the US to enter into a recession in the first part of next year that will be driven by tighter financial conditions, reduced business investment and slower growth globally. That will, in turn, push the unemployment rate up from its current 3.5% to 5.5% by the end of next year, according to the forecast.

More and more young adults are shattering misconceptions about modular and manufactured housing as many go with these options to secure housing in an otherwise unaffordable market. 

This information comes by way of a new survey from Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, Inc, a national financial intuition focusing on manufactured, modular, and mobile homes. The survey, conducted by the company's consumer insights team using Statista data, investigated how potential homebuyers perceive off-site built housing, as well as what they're looking for in their homes. 

Hurricane Ian is, and continues to be, a dangerous and destructive force, causing death, injury, and disruption. Some estimates of economic damage running a minimum of $30 billion and possibly as high as $70 billion.

Although it will take time to get accurate numbers, Trepp estimated the commercial real estate exposure in what has been one of the hottest markets in the country.

Manufactured homes, which tend to be a more popular choice in rural areas, could help significantly in providing more affordable housing, but policymakers will need to make some changes for that to happen, according to a new report examining the issue, as reported by the Daily Yonder.

The Urban Institute recently released a report looking at the role manufactured homes could play in easing the housing shortage. According to the report by Karan Kaul and Daniel Pang, it would take an additional 3.8 million units to meet demand. In fact, the National Association of Realtors estimates that a slower annual pace of residential completions from 2001 to 2020 relative to the annual pace from1968 to 2000 has resulted in at least 5.5 million fewer units being built from 2001 to 2020.

U.S. home prices cooled in July at the fastest rate in the history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, according to a report released Tuesday.

Home prices in July were still higher than they were a year ago, but cooled significantly from June gains. Prices nationally rose 15.8% over July 2021, well below the 18.1% increase in the previous month, according to the report.

The housing market is in a recession, many economists say, but when will home prices come back down to earth? Soon, one economist says.

With mortgage rates edging hogher, buyers are pulling back. More sellers are cutting prices on their listings and offering more concessions to entice buyers.

The largest group of renters, the Millennials, are being excluded from affordable housing due to low inventory and a widening gap between wages and the affordability of housing, including rentals.

Even with the housing and rental market cooling, it’s still not enough to make housing affordable for them. The top 90th percentile of Americans saw their wages increase while everyone else remained the same. Since 2000, those on top have seen their wages grow more than 15 percent, or making five times what a lower income American would make. Those on the bottom barely saw a three percent increase in their wages in 22 years.

The fight over rent control is starting up again. Advocates for rent regulation are pushing for new laws in Boston and other cities across the U.S.

On one side, tenant advocates say rent increases over the last year have pushed many families to the breaking point. On the other side, the owners of professionally-managed apartment properties say that despite the increases, rents remain in proportion to the incomes of their residents.

A California joint venture dropped $39.1 million for a West Palm Beach mobile home park.

An entity managed by Sacramento-based BoaVida Group and Auburn, California-based Nella Invest acquired the Holiday Ranch Mobile Home Park at 1375 Military Trail and 1396 Ranch Road, records show. The partnership assumed a $15.6 million Fannie Mae mortgage and obtained a second loan for $2.1 million from PGIM Real Estate Financing.

Buyers are beginning to ask for discounts and some deals fall through. But experts say the disturbance in the sector is based on “short-term uncertainty.”

In early June, two days before the Federal Open Market Committee increased the Federal Funds Rate by 75 basis points, Odyssey Properties Group struck a deal to buy a multifamily asset in Dallas at a 3.5 percent cap rate. The Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm was hoping to add the garden-style property to its existing portfolio, which consists of 44 properties comprising 7,217 multifamily units across 14 states with a total estimated value of more than $1.5 billion.

Apartment rents are rising explosively across the U.S. But at older, less-expensive properties, lower-income and moderate-income renters may strain to pay the rising cost.

That may be why the rents for Class-C apartments are rising steadily—but not as quickly as the rents at professionally-managed apartment properties, and not even as quickly as price inflation throughout the U.S. economy

Rising mortgage rates did not slow down rising home prices in March.

Nationally, home prices were 20.6% higher than they were in March 2021, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. That is higher than the 20% gain in February. The index is a three-month running average ending in March.

Inflation brings rising prices to just about everything it touches. Fuel prices are rapidly climbing to a national average of $5.00 a gallon. New home and resale prices are keeping a lot of people from buying the home they were ready to buy just 3 months ago.

Those new home buyers that were forced to abandon their hope of owning their own home have now turned to the rental market where they are willing to pay inflated rents just to have a place to live. But with all these new renters paying higher rents, where do current renters go when their rent is raised as much as 50% when it’s time to sign a renewal for their home or apartment?

Fewer Americans are moving than ever before, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau data — but a new report says the people who are taking the plunge are flocking to some familiar cities.

Houston, Las Vegas and Phoenix topped this year’s edition of truck rental company Penske’s annual Top Moving Destinations report, which uses data from its one-way consumer truck rental reservations to compile a list of the country’s 10 most popular cities for movers. More generally speaking, the Sun Belt led the way, with Dallas, Austin and San Antonio also ranking highly.

The COVID-19 pandemic shook up just about everything—especially where many people live. It caused a mass real estate migration unlike any in recent memory.

Lots of folks traded the cities for suburbs—more space! fewer people!—while others relocated to new, often cheaper, parts of the country. And with the popularity of remote work that allows buyers to live just about anywhere and the growing frustration with record-high home prices, the real estate reshuffle isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

Mortgage rates just hit their highest level since 2009, and home prices are continuing to experience double-digit gains. Now, nearly all of the major housing markets in the United States are less affordable than they have been historically, and affordability is near its worst point on record.

New calculations from Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider, show that 95% of the 100 biggest U.S. housing markets are less affordable than their long-term levels. That figure was at 6% at the start of the Covid pandemic. Thirty-seven markets are less affordable than they have ever been.

Being able to afford buying a home has grown more difficult as home prices and interest rates rise, according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions.

This comes as median-priced homes in 79% of counties across the U.S. have become less affordable than their historic averages, according to ATTOM’s 2022 U.S. Home Affordability Report. This is an increase from just 38% in the first quarter of 2021. In fact, housing affordability has reached its worst point since mid-2008 as home price growth continues to outpace wages.

Home prices increased 19.8% in February year over year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index. That is up from the 19.1% annual increase in January and is the third-highest reading in the index's 35-year history.

The 10-city composite annual increase came in at 18.6%, up from 17.3% in the previous month. The 20-city composite was up 20.2%, rising from 18.9%.

On the heels of rent control being greenlit in Minnesota earlier this year, Florida joined a slew of other states – like Maryland, Illinois and Kentucky – in proposing counterproductive rent control measures. Read on for an update on where that proposal stands as well as an update on other rent control actions across the nation.

The Florida State Legislature adjourned in mid-March. With the adjournment, measures seeking to revoke statewide preemption died in committee.

Miami led the U.S. in rent hikes during the pandemic.
Miami’s median apartment rent skyrocketed 58 percent to $2,988 per month since March 2020, according to a newly released report from Realtor.com.

Median rents increased nationwide by 19.3 percent to a new high of $1,807, with Sun Belt cities seeing many of the biggest gains. The trend follows migration to these markets since the onset of work-from-home shift, with many residents leaving pricier Big Tech hubs.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage just crossed 5%, now standing at 5.02%, according to Mortgage News Daily. This is the first time it has crossed that threshold since 2011, save two days in 2018. It stood at 3.38% one year ago today. 

Mortgage rates, which follow loosely the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury, have been climbing since the start of the year, partially due to the Federal Reserve’s policies to curb inflation as well as the global economic turmoil resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On March 29, President Biden released his Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal. This year’s proposal includes several provisions key to our industry—including a 19 percent HUD budget increase and provisions that would once again target ordinary income tax rates, capital gains tax rates, the taxation of unrealized capital gains at death, like-kind exchanges and carried interest.

NMHC appreciates the Administration’s focus on additional HUD funding that would support our shared housing affordability goals. However, we remain concerned about the harmful impacts of the proposed tax provisions. Congress rightly did not enact these tax proposals last year when they were considered as part of the infrastructure package, and doing so now would only reduce funds available to develop and manage real estate, an enterprise that often includes significant risk.

The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation measure showed intensifying price pressures in February, rising to its highest annual level since 1983, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Excluding food and energy prices, the personal consumption expenditures price index  increased 5.4% from the same period in 2021, the biggest jump going back to April 1983.

Commercial real estate has long been regarded as an inflation hedge, but economists from Moody’s Analytics say that adage will be tested this month as the Fed begins the first in a series of expected rate hikes. 

“This is the Fed’s attempt to curb inflation that hit 40-year highs in 2021 and which is likely to continue at elevated levels given inflationary pressure from the Ukraine-Russia military conflict, high oil prices, intensified supply chain issue, and labor shortages at home”

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved its first interest rate increase in more than three years, an incremental salvo to address spiraling inflation without torpedoing economic growth.

After keeping its benchmark interest rate anchored near zero since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee said it will raise rates by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points.

The 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 2% on Thursday as inflation data came in slightly hotter than expected.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 4 basis points to 1.99%, after topping 2% for the first time since Feb. 25. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond climbed 7 basis points to 2.374%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point is equal to 0.01%.

Apartment rents continued to increase in February 2022, but the pace of growth reverted closer to normal – even as occupancy remained at record highs.

Effective asking rents for new leases in February increased 0.75% month-over-month on a same-store basis. While that was the largest increase for a February on record, it wasn’t by much – and that alone is a notable shift. February’s increase was just 21 basis points (bps) above the long-term average for February going back to 2010. That’s the smallest spread between current-versus-average for any month since March 2021, prior to the historic run-up in rents that began in April 2021.

Mortgage rates are sinking as markets contend with the ramifications of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and that means home prices are likely to continue surging.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage had risen close to a full percentage point from the start of this year up until last Friday, when it hit 4.18%, according to Mortgage News Daily. It then fell to 4.04% Monday and 3.9% on Tuesday. That is the largest two-day drop since March 2020, the start of the pandemic.

Green Street, the preeminent provider of commercial real estate intelligence and analytics, has released its list of the Property Sectors Green Street Loves. Green Street’s research team regularly compares private-market, discounted cash flow (DCF) return expectations for 17 commercial property sectors, which drives the ranked list through its proprietary sector allocation framework.

Just recently, Green Street also initiated formal coverage of the ground lease sector via Safehold (SAFE), which is not included in this analysis but will be part of its sector allocation spanning 18 property types moving forward.

When Moraima and Roland Duran researched what type of home to build on their three-acre lot north of Austin, Texas, the couple was pleasantly surprised by the range of choices offered by a new generation of manufactured homes.

The Durans once lived in a small trailer on their lot. They found today’s prefab options far more appealing: The couple was able to customize a 2,100-square-foot model to include fireplaces, a room for their dogs and front and back porches.

Manufactured housing production is expected to grow rapidly in the first half of 2022, after already seeing sharp growth over the past two years, according to a new survey of producers.

Rising rents, home prices and interest rates are fueling optimism that 2022 will be the year the industry levels the playing field with conventional builders, per the latest Texas Manufactured Housing Survey. That sentiment is prompting what the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University called "a flood of capital expenditures and operational expansions."

Lumber prices have crashed 30% over the past two weeks as rising mortgage rates help cool down the US housing market.

Lumber traded limit down multiple times last week, and was down about 5% on Tuesday. The essential building material hit a high of $1,338 per thousand board feet on January 14 before trading to a low of $934 on Tuesday. 

A report released this week by Crowd Street, a real estate investing marketplace, lists the best places to invest in 2022.

“We take all property types into account since the deals on our platform cover private real estate opportunities in all multifamily and commercial real estate sectors,” CrowdStreet’s chief investment officer, Ian Formigle, said in a statement. “But to make the top 20, a market must consistently rank highly across multiple real estate classes.” 

Kiara Age moved in less than a year ago and now it's time to move again: Rent on her two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nevada, is rising 23% to nearly $1,600 a month, making it impossibly out of reach for the single mother.

Age makes $15 an hour working from home as a medical biller while also caring for her 1-year-old son, because she can't afford child care. By the time she pays rent - which takes up more than half of her salary - and buys groceries, there's little left over.

Sam Zell is betting big on manufactured homes.

Zell's Equity Lifestyle Properties paid $105 million for RVC Outdoor Destinations, an entity that operates six recreational vehicle communities, according to its fourth quarter earnings report. The firm also bought MHVillage, a listing website for manufactured homes, and Datacomp, which provides market-based valuations for them, for a combined $43 million.

Equity Lifestyle said it used cash, lines of credit and proceeds from stock sales to buy MHVillage, Datacomp and RVC, which owns 998 RV sites across at least nine states including California and Texas.

Existing-home sales declined in December, snapping a streak of three straight months of gains, according to the National Association of Realtors®. Each of the four major U.S. regions witnessed sales fall in December from both a month-over-month and a year-over-year basis. Despite the drop, overall sales for 2021 increased 8.5%.

Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dropped 4.6% from November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.18 million in December. From a year-over-year perspective, sales waned 7.1% (6.65 million in December 2020).

As 2021 came to a close, an Arizona company with an established footprint in Florida paid an eye-popping $363.12 million for Jamaica Bay, a manufactured home community on Tamiami Trail in Fort Myers.

The transaction was one of the largest in the county’s history and reminiscent of the October sale of the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club for $362.3 million, also to an Arizona company. And it surpassed the 2018 sale of the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort & Spa in Bonita Springs for $220 million, which, at the time, was called “the largest acquisition ever of a single Gulf Coast lodging property.”

JP Morgan sees an array of sectors in the US that are benefiting from high user demand and will perform well in 2022, according to its 4th annual Global Alternatives Outlook.

The report is based on the opinions of CEOs, CIOs and strategists from J.P. Morgan’s $200 billion-plus alternatives platform. It provides a 12- to 18-month perspective on the trends influencing their respective markets, as well as their most promising investment ideas and their thoughts on the underappreciated risks investors may face.

Secondary and tertiary markets across the American West and Florida are projected to be multifamily outperformers in 2022, led by Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tampa, Tucson, and Albuquerque, according to new research from Freddie Mac.

Those cities are projected to post annualized growth in gross income ranging between 6 and 7.6%, with vacancies hovering in neighborhoods of between 3.3% (Albuquerque) and 4.6% (Phoenix).

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, with a seemingly clear path to a second term heading the central bank, declared Tuesday that the U.S. economy is both healthy enough and in need of tighter monetary policy.

As part of his confirmation hearing  before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Powell said he expects a series of interest rate hikes this year, along with other reductions in the extraordinary help  the Fed has been providing during the pandemic era.

While the U.S. population grew at its slowest rate in history this past year, some states still saw their populations increase more than others—as well as home prices. 

The U.S. population grew at an estimated rate of 0.1% between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the Census Bureau. But in Idaho, which topped the list of states whose population grew the fastest, residents increased by 2.9%. 

A year ago, Jonathan Zobel was renting a two-bedroom condo unit in downtown Miami for $2,500. But his landlord wouldn’t renew his lease, as similarly sized units in the same building now rent for about $4,500.

Since that’s well out of the marine industry worker’s price range, he now shares a 600-square-foot apartment in Edgewater with his girlfriend while looking for his own place. It’s proven to be a challenge, as he’s lost out to competing offers three times.

After a slowdown during the beginning of the pandemic, rent prices are bouncing back big time. The median monthly cost for a one-bedroom apartment rose 11.6% over the course of the year, according to Zumper's 2021 National Rent Report, and some cities have risen well beyond that.

While most people may think one-bedrooms have surged most in expensive states like California or New York, they’re actually rising faster in Florida.

There's a new cohort of hot housing markets to watch in 2022.

After a 2021 that saw one of the wildest housing markets in memory, 2022 is shaping up to be nearly as competitive, but with perhaps slightly more inventory and slightly higher mortgage rates.

Property sellers are in the best position in 15 years to get close to their desired asking price, according to the latest monthly CoStar commercial repeat-sale indices.

The sale-price-to-asking-price ratio in October narrowed by 2.3 percentage points to 94.6%, the tightest this figure has been since 2006.

After more than a year of staggering increases in home prices, the party appears to be coming to an end.

The growth in prices, which rose more than 30% this year in some of the nation’s hottest real estate markets, appears to have peaked nationally. Home prices are still increasing, but substantially less than they were just a few months ago.

Fifteen miles east of downtown Austin, Texas, a community known as Oak Ranch is growing.

But it's not an Austin suburb. It's a trailer park, and the incoming residents fueling its growth happen to be Tesla workers.

Everyone by now has heard of the “Great Resignation.” Workers all over the country—whether burned out, fed up, or just experiencing serious post-pandemic wanderlust—have decided now’s the time to finally call it quits.

Home sales rose at a much slower pace in October.

Existing home sales rose 0.8% to a seasonally adjusted 6.34 million units in October from a month earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The results were better than analysts' expectations of a 1.8% decline, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.

In today’s hot housing market, homebuyers aren’t just attempting to outbid that friendly couple they spotted at the open house admiring the kitchen cabinetry. No, they’re also gearing up to compete with substantially bigger fish: an influx of deep-pocketed real estate investors who are vying for the same modest, single-family homes in the suburbs—and sometimes coming to the party with all-cash offers.

Single-family homes built to rent are emerging as the hottest corner of the U.S. property market, as investors respond to booming demand from home-seekers priced out of housing for sale.

The multifamily sector has remained strong throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. And a smaller subset of this sector, manufactured housing, has hit new heights during the last year, according to the latest research from JLL.

The multifamily sector entered the pandemic on solid footing, and despite challenges brought on by the pandemic, it has the potential to continue to outperform in the years ahead, according to Investcorp.

Ivy Zelman, the housing analyst famous on Wall Street for calling the top of the market in 2005, less than two years before the collapse, sees warning signs once again.

Investors of all types have been drawn to investment-grade single-family rental properties and their eye-popping fundamentals all year and there’s no end in sight for the sector.

Let’s talk about 2022. Apartment demand has soared the past year and is still flourishing. But RealPage chief economist Greg Willett points to several factors that could cool apartment performance next year.

With a federal moratorium on foreclosures ending, loan forbearance relief running out, and no end to the COVID-19 pandemic in sight, the latest data shows that foreclosures are starting to jump up.

Rent is going up around the country, a trend The New York Times attributes to the extremely competitive environment in the housing sector, which has prevented many people from switching from apartment living to homeownership. According to real estate data firm Yardi Matrix, in September, asking rents nationwide broke new records with an average increase of 11.4 percent compared to the year before.

If you’re house hunting but not finding many options, you're not alone. The inventory of both new and existing homes for sale in the United States is currently at a historical low. In fact, the shortage of housing units* nationwide is estimated at 3.8 million as of the end of 2020, according to Freddie Mac's research "Housing Supply: A Growing Deficit." In 2018, our estimate of the housing shortage was 52% less than it is now.

The 2021 multifamily bounce back has been like nothing seen in decades. Dazzling apartment demand has propelled lease concessions downward and average rent to stratospheric leves despite an increase in new supply compared to previous years. Of course, beneath the national metrics, some important differences emerge. As always, all numbers will refer to conventional properties of at least 50 units.

Half of the strongest office markets were in Florida and Texas during the third quarter, with several secondary markets making the list, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest Commercial Market Insights report.

While the strain on the U.S. economy from the coronavirus pandemic has been easing, with vaccination allowing many of the worst affected businesses like restaurants and hotels to return to operating at full capacity, one aspect of the COVID-19 crisis continues to this day: millions of renters are in danger of being evicted.

In 1990, fewer than 10,000 people lived in Meridian, Idaho, a sleepy bedroom community surrounded by farmland.

Now, with a population of 117,600, its main thoroughfare, Eagle Road, gets so congested at rush hour that motorists might forget they're in one the country’s most sparsely populated states.

After several decades of focusing almost exclusively on gateway markets, cross-border investors looking for assets in the U.S. are now eager to expand their horizons—literally. They are searching for investment opportunities in markets they wouldn’t have touched as recently as five years ago.

August brought yet another set of new records for U.S. apartment rent growth and occupancy.

Effective asking prices for new renters jumped 1.8% just in the month of August, driving asking prices up 10.3% year-over-year. The country’s average monthly rent for new residents just moving in reached $1,582.

Miami, Sacramento, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Tampa were the most popular migration destinations among major U.S. metros in July, meaning they had the biggest net inflows. A net inflow is a measure of how many more Redfin.com home searchers looked to move into a metro than leave.

U.S. home prices jumped by the most in three decades in June, surging 18.6 percent on an annual basis thanks to pandemic transplants and a housing shortage.

There has been a recent shift of attention in the real estate market as to the types of investments which make the strongest returns.

In the past, it’s always been a combination of  good design, prime location and strong architecture that were the elements of blue-chip properties. They still are, and there will always be a market and demand for these sorts of properties. 

The Supreme Court late Thursday blocked the Centers for Disease Control from enforcing a federal moratorium on evicting renters during the Covid pandemic, a defeat for the Biden administration’s effort to continue the moratorium despite an earlier signal from the court that the government’s action lacked the proper legal basis.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has deepened divisions in American society, including the classic gap between the haves and have-nots, especially when it comes to real estate.

The federal eviction moratorium, which has allowed struggling renters swamped by the fallout from COVID-19 to remain in their homes but left landlords mostly on the hook for unpaid rent, is starting to draw more fire from both camps.

The multifamily sector continued to look strong in July, according to the latest report from real estate data firm Yardi Matrix. The firm’s data shows that on a national basis, multifamily asking rents grew by a record 8.3 percent year-over-year in July, to an average of $1,510 a month. On a month-to-month basis, average rents nationally went up by 1.8 percent.

The past year has been the stuff of home sellers’ dreams. It seemed they could put whatever price tag they wished on their properties and buyers would still line up around the block, many with all-cash offers in hand. Then bidding wars would push prices even further into the stratosphere. Up and up, was there any limit to how far they could go?

The suburbs have gotten a pretty bad rap—they’re sleepy, they sprawl, and they don’t offer the exciting nightlife or cultural events found in bigger cities. Still, over the years, there has been a steady stream of buyers trading in the bright lights for a big backyard. And over the past year, that stream has turned into a gushing fire hose. More and more Americans have obsessively sought out more space to get their work done and unwind at the end of the day.

Apartments are where the heart is for investors, who set a second quarter record with a three-month spending spree.

Investors purchased $53 billion of multifamily real estate from April through June, according to Real Capital Analytics data. The buying binge marks a big turnaround from last year, when investors spent less than $20 billion during the same quarter in the early days of the pandemic, according to Bloomberg News.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday it will extend the federal eviction moratorium through October 3, 2021 after the ban lapsed over the weekend.

President Joe Biden is calling on Congress to extend the national eviction ban set to expire in two days.

“This moratorium prevented hundreds of thousands of Americans from experiencing the heartbreak, homelessness and health risks that too often emanate from evictions — particularly during a pandemic,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday.

The widely circulated theory that the COVID-19 pandemic would drive a mass exodus from gateway cities and into smaller towns and suburbs as people fled dense urban areas and wholeheartedly embraced remote work is proving to be largely unfounded.

Call it a trailer house (or house trailer) and show your age, or call it a mobile home and show some sensitivity, or call it a manufactured home and show that you keep up with changing times and perceptions.

The apartment market is booming. Based on NAR's analysis of CoStar market data in 138 markets1, net absorption (change in number of occupied units) rose by 207,035 units in 2021 Q2 from the prior quarter. In 2019 Q2, a pre-pandemic period, net absorption was only 116,526 units, about half the current pace of absorption.

The cost of renting a home is soaring in cities across the U.S., squeezing the finances of low-income households and posing a threat to the consensus that pandemic inflation will soon fade away.

Hiring in the U.S. picked up steam in June, as employers added 850,000 jobs amid declining COVID-19 cases and a reopening economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. After a lackluster April and May, June’s employment gains totaled 100,000 more jobs than economists originally predicted.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to lift a ban on evictions for tenants who have failed to pay all or some rent during the coronavirus pandemic.

Struggling renters will have a little more time before they have to worry about eviction.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday extended the national moratorium on evictions through the end of July. The policy, which has been in place since September of 2020, prohibits almost all evictions for nonpayment of rent.

International investors have a new favorite type of real estate. They now spend just as much money on apartment buildings in the U.S. as they spend on their old favorite property type, U.S. office space.

Even as the coronavirus pandemic ebbs and Americans get back to work and play, they still want more space at home. But with home prices hitting record highs, demand for single-family rental homes is soaring – and so are the rents. 

U.S. apartment rents and occupancy are climbing rapidly in 2021, and May’s performance results show a continuing acceleration of momentum.

With home prices at a new record high and homes flying off the market in hours in some cases, it’s no wonder that Google searches for “when is the housing market going to crash” have spiked dramatically in recent weeks. After all, the mania seems reminiscent of the run-up to the housing bubble in the mid-2000s—and we’ve all been told that what goes up must eventually come down.

As the saying goes, cash is king. And that’s especially true in today’s pandemic-fueled thrill ride of a real estate market, where homes can sell in days—or even hours—and usually after multiple offers.

With home prices at a new record high and homes flying off the market in hours in some cases, it’s no wonder that Google searches for “when is the housing market going to crash” have spiked dramatically in recent weeks. After all, the mania seems reminiscent of the run-up to the housing bubble in the mid-2000s—and we’ve all been told that what goes up must eventually come down.

Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel said inflation could spike to 20% in the next two or three years due to "unprecedented" fiscal and monetary stimulus and an explosion of the US money supply.

The multifamily industry had a more challenging than usual year, dealing with both the COVID-19 pandemic and skyrocketing materials prices, but new units continued to be added in markets throughout the country. 

U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich wrote in an opinion that although the pandemic is a health crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacks the legal authority to ban evictions.

President Biden called on Congress to make tax code changes this week that could hurt commercial real estate investors’ pockets. But the code changes detailed in The American Families Plan could also result in fundamental shifts in how real estate is bought, sold and developed.

During the pandemic, the kinds of amenities apartment renters looked for shifted. Outdoor spaces, reliable Internet connectivity and extra space for working all became “must haves” for some renters. And apartment industry experts say that even after the coronavirus pandemic is over, renters are likely to keep wanting more space in their apartments and more technology to keep them connected.

Even if the CMBS delinquency rate retreats, the default amount is still rising.

CoStar Group expects a large scale of distressed sales to hit mid-2021. The company modeled 16 different scenarios to determine how bad the carnage would be from this recession. In those exercises, the amount of distress landed between $92 billion to $370 billion, though it will likely be $126 billion

Homebuyers may think prices are rising and supply is dwindling because of low interest rates and increasing demand.

But two of the main reasons for the skyrocketing prices are actually a huge buying spree from institutional investors and surging building materials costs, according to Inman.

President Joe Biden’s $2.3-trillion, eight-year proposed American Jobs Plan, which aims to modernize and improve U.S. infrastructure, generate jobs, stimulate economic growth, and tackle climate change, could generate some new opportunities for real estate investors, although there are also concerns about higher corporate tax rates and other potential tax reforms.  

As the coronavirus real estate boom rages on, new data shows just how aggressively Americans are bidding for homes. In a handful of states, more than half of homes sold in March traded for more than their listing price.

Home price growth in the U.S. kicked off 2021 surging to a new record.

Standard & Poor’s said Tuesday that its S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index posted a 11.2% annual gain in January, up from 10.4% in December — reaching its highest recorded level since February 2006. The results surpassed estimates of a 10.5% year-over-year gain, according to consensus compiled by Bloomberg.

A federal ban on evictions is putting the squeeze on smaller landlords, who are unable to directly access Covid rental relief funds, and some are starting to sell properties to recoup losses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extended the national ban on evictions through the end of June.

While the past year hasn’t gone without hiccups for the U.S. multifamily sector, with some households struggling to pay rents and a few gateway cities seeing spiking vacancies, the sector still posted a surprisingly strong performance, according to a March report from real estate data firm Yardi Matrix.

With lumber prices and other building material costs still at record-high levels, homebuilder confidence fell two points in March, per the latest report from the National Association of Home Builders.

2020 brought unprecedented shifts in the rental market, largely stemming from migration shifts brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two months into 2021, we’re seeing clear signs that these trends have plateaued, or even slightly reversed,  following a bottoming out in 2020-Q4.

One day in October, 2016, Carrie Presley was visiting her boyfriend, Ken Mills, when she received a phone call from a neighbor informing her that someone had just been shot outside her home. Presley lived with her seventeen-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, in a two-story clapboard house on Jackson Street, in the northern part of Dubuque, Iowa. 

Rising costs restrain prospective homebuyers. Strong interest among buyers for a limited supply of homes for sale drove the me- dian price of an existing single-family home up 14.8 percent year over year to $325,300 in January.

U.S. construction spending reached the highest level on record last month as both local and federal governments began loosening the purse strings.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that the national ban on evictions that’s been in place since September is unconstitutional.

The downtown life in big coastal cities is so last decade. That’s according to the latest data that shows small towns in the heartland are newly trending for Gen Z renters. This is especially noteworthy because Zoomers were the fastest-growing active renter segment in the U.S. last year, and their locations of choice are just the opposite of their Millennial predecessors.

Americans are leaving the Northwest and Midwest in favor of the warmer Southeast and Southwest, according to a new report.

Communities are desperate for more affordable housing, but the cost for developers is just too high. Land, labor and materials were pricey before the coronavirus pandemic, and they are even more so now.

Smaller cities look set to see the biggest increases in new multifamily stock compared to the prior year.

Global commercial real estate investment ended 2020 on a strong note, with deal volume rising 84 percent in the final three months of the year following a drastic slowdown early in the pandemic.

While many apartment markets across the nation suffered rent cuts during the pandemic-induced lows of 2020, a handful of areas managed to avoid that fate. Many of these markets benefited from relative affordability in uncertain times.

If you’re of the opinion Tennessee is a fun place to visit and would be a beautiful spot to live, take a number and get in line. U-Haul® customers are well ahead of you.

More than 76 percent of U.S. rental households have made rent payments as of Jan. 6, according to a just-released report on rent collections from the National Multifamily Housing Council.

President-elect Joe Biden called on Congress to pass a range of protections and financial relief for Americans at risk of losing their homes because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The multifamily sector weathered the storm in 2020, living up to its reputation as one of the most stable commercial real estate asset classes. The forecast for apartments in the new year is also bright.

Home prices continued to surge in October, new data show.

Prices were up 8.4 percent year-over-year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index tracking the housing market in major metropolitan areas. Their 12-month gain in September was 6.6 percent.

The 1% are on the move. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen bought a $17 million teardown on Miami Beach’s ultra-exclusive Indian Creek island. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who are said to have plunked down $30 million for a lot, may be their neighbors.

The housing market will remain strong through 2021 as the economy recovers from the pandemic-driven recession. In early 2021, homebuyers will remain undeterred by the pandemic, eager to take advantage of sub-3% mortgage rates while they last.

A growing percentage of U.S. homeowners are looking to delay making mortgage payments, the latest sign that the economic recovery is hitting a snag.

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 89.8 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by December 20 in its survey of 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index covering home prices of all nine U.S. census divisions rose 7% in September from a year ago, the greatest year-over-year gain since 2014, and nearly 23% higher than its last peak in 2006.

What does the man who oversaw the Federal Reserve as it tried to help the country recover from the Great Recession think about the U.S. economy’s ability to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic?

Lennar Homes purchased a former mobile home park in Homestead for $29 million, with plans to build a new housing community.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, multifamily occupancy is up. Memphis, Tennessee, is seeing rising rents, and cap rates for apartment assets in Detroit have spiked.

Low rates and rosy assumptions about how much rent properties might collect helped fuel the record $5 trillion debt boom in U.S. commercial real estate over the past decade.

Upticks in prices of industrial and multifamily assets and some alternative property types this fall resulted in increases in overall Commercial Property Price Indexes of the three major market trackers.

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 80.4 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by November 6 in its survey of 11.5 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.

Fallout from missed rent payments is threatening a swath of the U.S. population, as the expiration of eviction bans draws near.

Thousands of apartments stood empty in August 2020 that had been occupied only a few months before in urban cores across the country, including in previously white-hot markets like San Francisco and New York.

On Sept. 1, U.S. health officials announced they would suspend evictions across the United States to help stem further spread of the novel coronavirus.

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 90.6 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by October 20 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.

U.S. states saw another 840,000 jobless claims filed last week, as the number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment insurance benefits each week continues to hover at a historically high level.

On Oct. 1, just hours before the first reports of the news that President Donald Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package. Among the elements in the bill: a complete ban on eviction filings over nonpayment. That’s a far stronger action than Congress or the White House has taken previously. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will allow the state’s ban on residential foreclosures and evictions to expire Oct. 1.

There has been stable occupancy and rental collections in 2020 despite the pandemic. As a result, some investors are now betting big on manufactured housing communities.

The National Apartment Association (NAA) announced today that it is taking legal action against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its nationwide eviction moratorium, joining the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in its lawsuit challenging the legality of the federal agency’s order.

Blackstone Group Inc. is pouring more cash into mobile-home parks, a corner of the commercial real estate market that is holding up in the pandemic.

A surge in the share of mortgages 90 days or more overdue in June is a signal the U.S. could be heading toward a foreclosure crisis, according to a CoreLogic report on Wednesday.

The Trump administration announced a sweeping federal eviction moratorium on Tuesday, offering protections for struggling renters that go far beyond the previous 120-day moratorium that expired in July. Under the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the administration issued a four-month ban on evictions in order to keep millions of tenants in place in the hopes of preventing the spread of coronavirus.

Real estate investors have turned to single-family rental homes, warehouses and even movie studios while the pandemic makes it harder to put capital to work in more-traditional types of commercial property.

The number of Americans who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time came in above 1 million for the 22nd time in 23 weeks as the economy struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Average U.S. mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed loan fell to 2.91% this week, the second-lowest level on record, Freddie Mac said in a report on Thursday.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are on track to lend nearly as many dollars to apartment properties in 2020 as they did in 2019. They have even loosened rules created in the early months of the COVID-19 crisis that required new multifamily borrowers keep enough reserves on hand to ensure they could make loan payments for as long as 18 months.

Millions of apartment residents have fallen behind on their rent payments, according to data from the U.S. Census—and the damage is likely to spread as the economic crisis caused by the novel coronavirus continues.

The pandemic is pushing homeowners out of the big cities and into rural and suburban areas, pushing up home prices in previously sleepy towns.

A big part of COVID-19 relief policy in the early days of the crisis was a ban on evictions. At the federal level that included a 120-day ban on evictions as part of the CARES Act, which has now expired.

The number of empty apartments for rent in Manhattan soared to their highest level in recent history, topping 13,000, as residents fled the city and landlords struggled to find new tenants.

Average U.S. mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to an all-time low of 2.88% this week, the eighth time in 2020 the weekly rate has set a record in a Freddie Mac series that goes back almost five decades.

Typically, June 30 is the biggest day for affordable housing deals in New York City. It’s the end of the fiscal year, so developers race to close deals to get funding approval and get started building, says Rafael Cestero, president and chief executive officer of the New York-based Community Preservation Corporation. One of the nation’s largest financial backers of affordable housing, the nonprofit he leads has a $3.5 billion portfolio of active construction loans and mortgages. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are currently 22 million Americans living in 6.8 million manufactured homes across the U.S.  After years of decline starting in the late 1990’s, manufactured housing has been rising in popularity over the last few years. 

South Florida construction starts took a nosedive in June, continuing the trend since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Investment sales volumes in the commercial real estate sector fell nearly 70 percent as the massive economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic ground deal making activity nearly to a halt. Data from CoStar and Real Capital Analytics showed a similar drop in magnitude although the latest price indices show only a slight decline in values, evidence that a mass repricing of assets has yet to take place.

Americans are struggling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout. According to a report compiled by Apartment List, 36% of renters and 30% of homeowners did not make full on-time payments in July.

With strong rent collections reported on the local and national levels, multifamily has fared better than other asset classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. While many investors and operating partners put their pencils down because they couldn’t find assets, one multifamily executive says he is seeing investor demand start to pick back up. However, sellers have been a little slower to come back.

The clock is ticking in Washington D.C. In a few weeks, a federal emergency program will stop distributing extra funds to people who lost jobs in the crisis caused by the novel coronavirus. That could cause a huge number of renters to fall behind on their rents and eventually lose their homes.

The Green Street Commercial Property Price Index was unchanged in June. Price adjustments reflecting the economic slowdown and uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus pandemic were incorporated into index values several months ago. The headline all-property index is down 11% from pre-Covid levels.

Verde Capital Corp., a private equity and investment management company, is negotiating a sale of several hundred apartments in Northern New Jersey. A buyer has agreed to pay $75 million, or roughly $250,000 per unit for the property, which Verde owns in partnership with a local real estate family.

The United States has reported record increases in coronavirus cases with spikes seen in states well underway in their reopening progress. The rising case numbers have caused states to alter their recovery plans, delay reopening measures and even re-institute restricitions on businesses. Data from key sectors could help illustrate the impact these changes have on the country’s economic progress. 

COVID-19 has undoubtedly affected rent prices across the nation as 2 in 3 renters were financially impacted by the pandemic and in-person touring came to a halt in March and April. With so much uncertainty and need of affordability, we used our data to grab a snapshot of what rent prices looked like the week of March 15th (when Shelter-in-Place and Stay-at-Home orders began to be enacted) and compared that to the week of June 15th to see the top cities with prices on a downward trajectory.

MHInsider magazine, the premier trade journal for the manufactured housing industry, in May published the second annual State of the Industry edition. A central component to the edition is the visual treatment of manufactured housing industry data we and our industry partners provide. The data infographic on manufactured housing industry trends provides a quick, graphic overview of the state of the industry.

U.S. sales of previously owned homes dropped in May by more than forecast to the lowest level since October 2010 as the coronavirus pandemic sent demand skidding along with the rest of the economy.

Some lucky multifamily developers will start work on new apartment projects at the perfect time, as the U.S. begins to recover from the economic crisis caused by the COVID pandemic.

Looking at monthly changes, all of the top 10 priciest cities either had flat or declining rents. It seems the pandemic has shifted the demand for apartments away from the most expensive cities, since usually demand picks up as we head into summer but now the opposite is true. As more and more companies move into remote work, many renters don’t want to pay the big city price tag when they are unable to use the amenities and are looking for more affordable options outside of large, metropolitan areas.  

As the U.S. economy makes further progress in recovering from the harsh blow of the coronavirus pandemic, certain industries are showing signs of recovery. Home purchases are up compared to last year, reservations are increasing at restaurants and hotel occupancy rates are on the rise. Even the battered air travel industry has seen some slight growth in passengers, indicating that the worst might be over for the U.S. economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified a demographic shift that could affect the top markets for multifamily construction for years to come.

Nearly half of commercial retail rents were not paid in May. Companies as big as Starbucks say the financial devastation from the shutdown has left them unable to pay their full property bills on time. Some companies warn they will not be able to pay rent for months.

CNBC’s Kelly Evans and Diana Olick discuss the home shortage and the health of the housing market amid the pandemic with Tim Mayopoulos, former Fannie Mae CEO.

It may be months before buyers and sellers understand what apartment properties are worth in an economy hobbled by the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Despite mass unemployment and underemployment, multifamily rental payments have held up far better than many industry experts expected amid the economic wreckage caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Jobless claims were up by another 2.98 million last week, but within the bleak report, economists see a small sign of encouragement in the fact that the record number of continuing claims rose by less than half a million.

This was supposed to be a year marked by a healthy amount of new multifamily supply, as some 300,000 units were on pace to open by the end of 2020. But federal, state and local stay-at-home orders and other responses to the coronavirus pandemic will likely reduce that to around 250,000 units, according to projections by commercial real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap and REIS, the property research arm of Moody’s Analytics.

Following an unprecedented 20.5 million drop in payroll last month, the April unemployment rate reached a record 14.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Sam Zell, chairman and founder of Equity Group Investments Inc., discusses current market valuations and what the post-coronavirus world may look like. Zell, the billionaire known for buying up troubled real estate, said the Covid-19 pandemic will leave the same kind of impact on the economy and society as the Great Depression 80 years ago, with long-lasting changes in human behavior that imperil many business models. He speaks in an exclusive 40-minute interview with Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker.

The United States has had more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, with a death count approaching 70,000, as of Monday. And new reporting from the New York Times revealed that the Trump administration is "privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1 [...] nearly double from the current level of about 1,750."

Manufactured housing properties are not only surviving the economic crisis created by the spread of the novel coronavirus. By some accounts the sector is thriving compared to other types of real estate.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria told HousingWire last month that his expectation was that approximately 1 million GSE mortgages would be in forbearance by May, but as the calendar flipped to May, it appears that Calabria undershot that projection by a sizable margin.

On the heels of worse-than-anticipated first-quarter GDP data, investors got additional economic data Thursday to reflect the ongoing damage being done to the U.S. economy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By the last week of April, 91.5 percent of renters across the U.S. have paid some or all of their rent, but industry leaders are urging lawmakers to provide more assistance for renters as they brace for how payments will pan out in May.

Class-C apartment tenants have been badly hurt by the economic shutdown precipitated by the novel coronavirus, crushing their ability to pay rents, thereby putting strain on those properties’ owners to continue to cover costs and mortgage payments.

Protection measures against the coronavirus continued to tear through the employment ranks, with 5.245 million more Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Every part of the US economy will be altered by COVID-19. Commercial property is no exception. Coordinated efforts to contain the spread of the COVID-19 have abruptly halted much of the global economy.

Nearly a third of U.S. apartment renters didn’t pay any of their April rent during the first week of the month, according to new data to be released Wednesday by the National Multifamily Housing Council and a consortium of real-estate data providers.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the economy is in the throes of an “absolutely shocking” downturn that is not reflected yet in the current data.

JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon said Monday he expects the coronavirus crisis to include a “bad recession” and elements of financial strain similar to the 2008 downturn.

The average rents on apartments are already dropping, as the U.S. economy grinds to a halt and millions of workers have lost their jobs, been furloughed or have been asked to stay home to fight the rapid spread of COVID-19.

Sam Zell’s Equity Residential said it will halt evictions and rent increases for 90 days on its thousands of apartments across the country in response to the coronavirus emergency.

The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy, and data released Thursday morning reflected the severe damage being done to the labor market.

To date, U.S. economic data has done little to reflect the expected negative impacts from coronavirus-related slowdowns.

Until Monday.

The New York Federal Reserve released its latest Empire State Manufacturing survey Monday morning, which showed the report’s index of business conditions fell to its lowest level since 2009.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told CNBC on Friday he expects the U.S. commercial real estate market will crumble, much like the broader housing market collapse of 2008.

The global flight to the safety government debt continued on Friday as investors piled into U.S. Treasurys and sent the yield on the 10-year note to record lows.

Fears related to the potential global economic fallout from the coronavirus sparked a meteoric drop in the stock market last week, including a more than 4,000-point plunge in the Dow. Even as jittery global stock markets have worked to claw back from steep losses in trading this week, the question is how much of that contagion will spill over to impact commercial real estate?

The Federal Reserve announced an emergency rate cut Tuesday of half a percentage point in response to the growing economic threat from the novel coronavirus.

The average U.S. fixed rate for a 30-year mortgage fell to 3.45% this week, matching the three-year low set three weeks ago.

The rate declined as global money managers spooked by the coronavirus named Covid-19 piled into the U.S. bond markets, boosting competition for securities back by home loans.

One of the best-performing investments since last decade’s housing crash: trailer parks.

From the March 2009 stock-market bottom, shares of big mobile-home park owners Sun Communities Inc. SUI-0.44% and Equity LifeStyle Properties Inc. ELS +0.03% have returned a tech-like 4,137% and 1,186%, respectively, counting price changes and dividend payments. The S&P 500’s return has been 499%.

The Apartment Guide 2020 Annual Rent Report highlights current trends and price fluctuations that renters may experience in various places across the United States. The report compares rent prices for studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments to determine which areas of the country or cities are becoming more expensive or more affordable for renters.

The top 10 markets saw a mixture of growth rates in this report. New York City and Washington D.C. were both on upward year-ver-year trends: New York City one bedroom rent was up nearly 8%, while D.C. two bedroom rent was up over 15%. On the flip side, cities that had rents down on all fronts, both on a monthly and year over year basis, included Seattle and San Diego.

South Florida will see nearly 16,000 apartments delivered this year, leading rents to flatten in markets with added supply, according to a recently released report.

Apartment rents have risen steadily across the country and while most people know that the cities with the most expensive rents include markets in the Bay Area and New York City, those markets did not see the largest growth on a percentage basis in the past decade.

Apartment List’s first quarterly Renter Migration Report of the new decade!

Conventional wisdom says the Federal Reserve won’t cut rates during an election year, to avoid looking like it’s favoring one candidate over another – unless there’s an economic shock so severe, it’s forced to act.

Who loves the sun? More Americans than ever, according to U-Haul.

The combination of strong fundamentals, low interest rates and intense interest from investors should make for another white hot year for the multifamily sector.

Weekly earnings for employees of small businesses grew at an annual rate of 4.1% at the end of the year, the fastest pace since the Paychex/IHS Markit Small Business Employment Watch began.

We asked seven economists and researchers about their 2020 predictions for the U.S. commercial real estate market.

Forget Seattle, Denver and San Francisco. Boise, Idaho, is poised to be the hottest housing market at the start of the next decade.

After a strong year in multifamily housing, expect an even stronger one in 2020, according to RealPage Chief Economist Greg Willett.

As high-net-worth (HNW) investors and family offices mull next year’s opportunities in commercial real estate, they might want to keep the multifamily mantra in mind.

On the whole, the nation’s housing prices continued to rise throughout this year and are expected to continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

The nation’s low mortage rates were the main driver of homebuyer demand throughout 2019, spurring an uptick in home sales across the country. But as more homeowners flocked to the market, housing inventory, which has been on a steady decline since the housing crisis, fell in housing markets from the east to the west.

The Federal Reserve left its benchmark rate unchanged on Wednesday and signaled it plans to hold steady through 2020, barring unexpected economic news.

The pace of rising home prices quickened in September and existing home sales ticked up 1.9 percent.

In December, the majority of the nation’s rental prices either declined or remained relatively flat during the month, Zumper said in its National Rent Report.

Just over a year ago, mortgage rates nearly hit 5%, levels that hadn’t been seen since the early part of this decade. But as we get ready to move into a new decade, mortgage rates are more than a full percentage point lower than that, comfortably back in the 3-4% range.

In the U.S., 24-hour cities—the cities that essentially are up all night—translate mainly to the coastal gateway cities: Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, 18-hour cities are often the markets with above-average urban population growth, plus a lower cost of living and lower cost of doing business relative to 24-hour cities. The poster children for this emerging class of up-and-comers have been cities like Denver, Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tenn.

Apartment rents are likely to keep rising, even if the economy continues to slow over the next year, according to industry experts.

Florida will continue growing by more than 300,000 people a year and will top 22 million residents in 2022, according to a report posted online this week by state economists.

Foreign investors continue to spend money on apartment properties in the U.S., even while they may be slowing down on purchases of assets in other sectors. In the second quarter, cross-border investors became net sellers of U.S. commercial real estate overall for the first time in seven years, according to Jim Costello, senior vice president with research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA).

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae lenders are once again fighting hard to make deals.

America’s rental prices declined in September, as RentCafé indicates the nation’s average rent fell by $1 – the first decrease since 2017.

The U.S. foreclosure rate fell to the lowest level in two decades in July as a strong labor market made it easier for Americans to pay their bills.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.5% in September as the economy added 136,000 jobs, slowing from August’s upwardly revised 168,000 gain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Life insurance companies are set to create a surge in multifamily lending in 2020, according to a new study from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Investors are starting to pay less for apartment properties in markets that have some kind of rent regulation laws on the books.

Homeownership is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve — and a new report shows that relief isn’t coming any time soon.

Foreign investors continue to spend money on apartment properties in the U.S., even while they may be slowing down on purchases of assets in other sectors. In the second quarter, cross-border investors became net sellers of U.S. commercial real estate overall for the first time in seven years, according to Jim Costello, senior vice president with research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA).

The top 3 markets all saw dips in rent prices last month as New York City fell from its 3 year high and San Francisco continued its downward trend. The rankings for the top 10 saw some movement in the middle and bottom, as Washington D.C moved up to become 6th, pushing Los Angeles down to 7th, and San Diego and Anaheim move into the top cities, both tied as 10th. Oakland also had a large 5.2% monthly one bedroom rental growth rate but remained firmly as 4th.

The nation's 150 major apartment markets have seen approximately 2 million new apartments built since 2010, but there's a problem. The number of renters in those cities have increased by about 2.5 million in that same time period. And with renting an apartment becoming more popular than it has in 20 years, that leads to many markets were demand exceeds supply.

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates once again when the Federal Open Markets Committee meets in September.

Two weeks ago Jyske Bank, Denmark’s third-largest bank, shocked the world by offering mortgages with a negative interest rate. Put simply, the bank would effectively pay customers to borrow money. It’s a bit more complicated than that, however, as borrowers have to pay fees that offset the savings.

Which cities are the best real estate markets and which are the worst? If you're a real estate agent, real estate investor, homeowner, homebuyer, or considering moving, you'll likely want to know the answer to that question.

Although multifamily occupancy rates keep climbing, with apartment occupancy rates in July reaching the highest level since 2000, multifamily construction is slowing.

This decade, more than 2 million new multifamily units have been added across the US. In terms of raw numbers, this volume hasn’t been seen since the 2.4 million new units introduced in the 1980’s. However, if we consider annual new units as a percent of existing capacity, the annual average of 2% for this decade falls well short of the 5% average from the 1980’s.

Delayed multifamily project completions are putting upward pressure on rent growth at new class-A buildings, according to data from research firm the CoStar Group.

Although the housing market continues to experience a slowdown in home price appreciation, new data from Zillow suggests the nation’s rental market is thriving.

It looks like the multifamily sector is set to have another strong year thanks to a combination of factors that will fuel demand for rental housing.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note broke below the 2-year rate early Wednesday, an odd bond market phenomenon that has been a reliable, albeit early, indicator for economic recessions.

In the next year, 5% of U.S. markets are predicted to depreciate, with Louisiana holding on to its title as the state with the most depreciating markets, claiming four of the 10 spots on the bottom market list.

The Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark rate by a quarter point Wednesday as an insurance policy not against what’s wrong with the economy now, but what could go wrong in the future. It was the first rate cut by the central bank in more than a decade.

San Francisco one bedroom rent hit another peak, up $20 to $3,720, as summer moving demand starts to drive up prices in this city. New York City one bedroom rent, on the other hand, took a slight dip after hitting its 3 year peak in our last rent report. 

San Francisco one bedroom rent hit another peak, up $20 to $3,720, as summer moving demand starts to drive up prices in this city. New York City one bedroom rent, on the other hand, took a slight dip after hitting its 3 year peak in our last rent report. 

In the D.C. suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland, a massive apartment rental and condominium complex is going up, and apparently it can’t happen fast enough. Demand for rental apartments in and near cities across America is soaring, just when most thought it wouldn’t be. The expectation was that rental demand would fall as millennials aged into their homebuying years.

Payroll growth rebounded sharply in June as the U.S. economy added 224,000 jobs, the best gain since January and running contrary to worries that both the employment picture and overall growth picture were beginning to weaken. The unemployment rate edged up to 3.7% as labor force participation rose, according to the Labor Department.

San Francisco one bedroom rent hit another peak, up $20 to $3,720, as summer moving demand starts to drive up prices in this city. New York City one bedroom rent, on the other hand, took a slight dip after hitting its 3 year peak in our last rent report. The other top 10 markets saw some adjustments as San Jose kicked down Boston to rank as the 3rd priciest city and D.C. outpaced Los Angeles to become 5th. Oakland also fell to 7th. 

 A survey conducted by law firm Akerman LLP found 70 percent of respondents felt “more optimistic” about real estate in 2019 than last year. 

 Strong leasing activity in this young summer season has pushed occupancy to a level the nation’s apartment market hasn’t seen since the tail end of the tech boom in the early 2000s. 

(Bloomberg)—The U.S. housing slowdown is turning out to be a gift to apartment landlords. After all, those people who aren’t buying still need somewhere to live.

“The Southeast’s major metros have posted terrific apartment sector performance during this cycle,” says Greg Willett, chief economist for RealPage Inc., a provider of property management software and services based in Richardson, Texas. “Investment returns have rivaled the results generated in traditionally favored gateway markets, without the volatility sometimes seen in this part of the country during the past.”

In March, the nation’s home-sale prices remained virtually stagnant, inching backward only 0.1% from 2018 levels, according to new data from Redfin.

When it comes to real estate, gentrification might just be the touchiest subject of all. In search of reasonable housing prices, short commutes, and the tantalizing prospect of a kick-ass return on investment, professionals are moving en masse into lower-income neighborhoods. 

Borrowers have an unexpected second chance to get low-interest financing to buy or re-finance apartment properties, thanks to growing worries about the slowing U.S. economy.

Financial headlines have been full of worries about a possible recession and a downturn in commercial real estate markets. Recessions often precipitate a decline in real estate markets, but long periods of increasing construction and rising property prices may pose risks of their own.

By just about any way you look at it, 2018 was the best year for multifamily real estate this century: Renters paid more for housing than they ever have before, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both had banner years, commercial and multifamily debt hit an all-time high, all while delinquencies remained at historic lows.