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The National Apartment Association has a nice infographic showing the apartment jobs outlook as the leasing season kicked into high gear. You’ll notice that Raleigh is on the list for metro areas with the largest concentration of job postings and it has the longest time to fill open positions.
The Winston-Salem Journal ran a story in its June 8 edition highlighting the sale of 15 apartment communities in Forsyth County, and just today (June 20) another two were announced. The June 8 article does a nice job summarizing the many factors that contribute to the spike in transactions – demographics, lifestyle, costs – but one facet of the transactions that they pick up on is something that has been observed over the last year by apartment industry observers: a significant increase in out-of-town buyers of apartments. From the June 8 article:
Yet, there have been six apartment-complex purchases in Forsyth over the past three months, all by out-of-region and out-of-state buyers.
“Investors are trying to find what few pockets of value there are left in the apartment market,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist for Wells Fargo Securities.
“Prices have been bid up so much in larger markets, such as Charlotte, Raleigh and Nashville, that investors are increasingly looking to markets that have been overlooked and show great potential for growth.
“Winston-Salem and Greensboro are at the top of the list of overlooked markets.”
If you’re wondering what the price points were for the transactions, we did a little “back of the napkin” calculating using the information from the article and some data we have in our membership files and found the following;
Those 15 communities have a total of 2,349 units and the combined total of sales prices was $136,640,000, or $58,169 per unit.
Carlisle Residential has sold its Encore North community in Greensboro to Grimley Residential. The 237-unit community sold for $34.3 million, or $144,725 per door. Here are more details from an article in Multi-Housing News:
Carter-Haston will manage the community on behalf of the new owner. Built in 2017, the apartment property offering one- and two-bedroom homes is located at 3619 N. Elm St., less than 5 miles north of downtown Greensboro.
The community was built by Lomax Construction and comprises five three-story buildings, with an occupancy rate of nearly 94 percent, according to Yardi Matrix data. Amenities include a fitness center, swimming pool, resident lounge and dog park…
Grimley Residential’s Southeast portfolio is growing. Early last year, the company bought Preserve at Hardin Valley, a 296-unit community in Knoxville, Tenn., for $48 million from a joint venture between Crescent Bend Development and Cumberland Advisors, according to Yardi Matrix.
Apartment transactions in the Triad are continuing at a steady pace, the most recent example being a 100-unit community in northwest Greensboro. From the Triad Business Journal:
A luxury apartment community in the Piedmont Triad International Airport submarket has sold for $16.2 million...
Piedmont Place at 5817 Garden Village Court has 100 units with either one or two bedrooms, and garages. Amenities include hardwood floors, granite countertops, a tankless hot water system, garden tubs and a community clubhouse and pool.
The new owner has hired Hawthorne Residential Partners to manage the community, built in 2015.
Millennials have dominated the attention of the business world for so long that we’ve almost forgotten that there are other markets out there to conquer. (As a member of GenX you don’t want to get me started about how my whole generation was forgotten because we were squeezed between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials). Wouldn’t you know it, the successors to the Millennials, GenZ, are entering the rental housing market in a big way and they are starting to have an impact. Bob Pinnegar, NAA’s CEO, recently wrote about these changes for the Washington Post. Here’s an excerpt:
By 2020, Gen Z will represent 40 percent of all consumers. While most of the business insight into this generation (those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s) has been focused on its spending habits as teenagers, its oldest members are now graduating college, entering the workforce and seeking apartment homes of their own…
Gen Z has never lived in a world without the Internet or social media. More than any previous generation, it takes for granted the availability of technology. An iPhone isn’t a technological achievement; it’s simply a part of daily life…
Gen Zers’ social media savvy also makes it critical to differentiate marketing and messaging for various channels… Gen Z uses Twitter more often than millennials, and that platform is an ideal way to reach them with real-time, immediate marketing messages such as sales offers and stories about new amenities. Instagram is for inspiration, so compelling images are essential, and Snapchat is perfect for storytelling through images…
Gen Zers were raised by the skeptics of Generation X and grew up during a recession. They are quick to fact-check claims and, as the IBM and NRF report found, “their focus is on quality and authenticity — not on marketing hype.” For property owners and managers, this means actively engaging with residents and taking a transparent approach when providing community information. Negative reviews online are not deleted; they are thoughtfully addressed.
On May 22, 2019 a record number of representatives from the Piedmont Triad Apartment Association visited the North Carolina General Assembly and visited with over 30 state legislators as part of the Apartment Association of North Carolina’s 2019 Lobby Day. Here’s a link to AANC’s Legislative Packet which will provide you with an overview of the issues we discussed with legislators, and below you’ll find just a few of the many pictures we took with our state Representatives and Senators.
Two apartment industry professionals from the Triad were inducted into the Apartment Association of North Carolina’s (AANC) Hall of Fame this week. During a ceremony held at AANC’s 2019 Education and Legislative Conference in Raleigh, Sue White and Peter Placentino, both of Greensboro, along with seven other apartment professionals, were inducted into the 2019 AANC Hall of Fame.
Sue White, President of Donathan Properties based in Greensboro, has been a member of Piedmont Triad Apartment Association for 39 years, serving as President in 1989-90. She has also been a member of AANC since it was founded in 1986 and served as AANC’s first president, not from the Charlotte area.
Ms. White has been involved in multi-family housing development since 1977. She began her career with McCoy Development, which later changed its name to Kenyon Investment Group. Kenyon subsequently merged with Sunstates Corporation of Raleigh, North Carolina. While with these organizations, Ms. White was responsible for the development of several luxury apartment projects that were pre-sold to Balcor/American Express. In addition, Ms. White operated Kenyon’s management company prior to the merger with Sunstates.
Ms. White left Sunstates Corporation in 1983 to start Donathan Properties, Inc. Bainbridge in the Park, Donathan Properties’ first development project, was a joint venture with 1st Home Federal Savings and Loan of Greensboro, North Carolina and was presold to a real estate investment banking firm headquartered in Westport, Connecticut. Donathan Properties developed and owns Briarleigh Park Apartments, a 216-unit community in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which opened in July 1987.
Ms. White’s expertise includes the identification and purchase of sites, site layout, unit mix, project sales, marketing and lease-up, as well as overall construction management. Donathan Properties, Inc. is a HUD approved management company.
Projects in Ms. White’s development portfolio include:
Marchwood (264 units), Greensboro, NC
The Hedges (188 units), Greensboro, NC
The Forest (264 units), Durham, NC
Cooper’s Pond (172 units), Raleigh, NC
Drayton Quarter (206 units), Charleston, SC
Bainbridge in the Park (216 units), Durham, NC
Briarleigh Park (216 units), Winston-Salem, NC
Hyde Park (216 units), Cary, NC
Southern Village Apartments (250 units), Chapel Hill, NC
Brookberry Park Apartments (252 units), Winston-Salem, NC
Skybrook Apartments (268 units), Huntersville, NC
Haven at Regents Park Apartments (288 units) Fort Mill, SC
Peter Placentino, Senior Vice President of Property Management at Brown Investment Properties based in Greensboro, has been an active member of PTAA, AANC and the National Apartment Association (NAA) for over 35 years. He is the only person to serve as President of AANC twice, he also served as President of PTAA in 1990-91 and as Secretary of the National Apartment Association in 2000.
At Brown Investment Properties Mr. Placentino optimizes assets for each property owner. He believes in and supervises hands-on, detail-oriented management of physical assets, operations, and personnel. His extensive experience covers all types of tenant-occupied property – multi-family, retail, office, and industrial. He has many years of experience in construction, development, and legislative matters of the multi-family housing industry. This knowledge base brings additional benefit to property owners. Peter has been involved in distressed asset management since the 1980s and is an expert in stabilization and disposition of these properties.
Peter started with Brown Investment Properties in 1983 and has worked in property management since 1979. He is a Certified Property Manager (CPM) and a licensed Real Estate Broker in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Several startup companies are offering loan products meant to help people pay their rent. From an article in the Wall Street Journal:
These companies, which also include Domuso and Till, are entering a market long associated with payday lenders. Compared with cash-advance loans, which come with annual interest rates as high as 700% in some states, funds from the rent-lending startups are available at much lower cost. Some are competitive with credit-card borrowing rates at less than 20%...
Other companies offering rental loans see their products as a backup for tenants in more precarious circumstances. Till, which advertises its loans as much cheaper than those of payday shops, pitches rental financing to renters and landlords as a way to avoid evictions.
Data on how often renters default on their loans is hard to come by from third parties, and most of the rental-lending companies won’t share such information. Some lenders say one measure could be the “serious” delinquency rate on unsecured personal loans, which is defined as borrowers who are more than 60 days behind on payments. It stood at 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the credit agency TransUnion .
HowMuch put together a chart showing the cost of renting vs. owning in each state and it’s interesting:
Our latest visualizations use data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey to compare the cost of renting a home and owning a home in each state. To calculate the median monthly mortgage payment, we subtracted median housing costs of houses without mortgages from median housing costs of mortgaged houses. For median rent payments, we used contract rent, which is defined as the monthly rent for a home without including payments for utilities.
Multifamily Insiders has conducted a research study on apartment communities’ use of ancillary income and here’s their list of the top 10 most commonly collected:
Here are the 10 most commonly collected forms of ancillary income: (Percentage shows percent of responders who collected that type of income)
| Application Fees | 92.09% |
| Late Fee | 87.05% |
| Pet Rent | 82.73% |
| Early Termination | 71.94% |
| Month to Month Fee | 67.63% |
| Water | 58.99% |
| Parking/Garage Fees | 54.68% |
| Admin Fees | 53.96% |
| Trash | 53.24% |
| Washer/Dryer | 42.45% |