Multifamily vacancies fell to 4.6 percent as of Sept. 30 from 4.7 percent in the second quarter, Reis Inc. (REIS) said in a report released today. The decline was the smallest since the apartment recovery began in early 2010, and landlords leased fewer units on a net basis than during the first and second quarters, according to the New York-based research firm.
“We are starting to lose renters to home purchasers,” said Matthew Gardner, principal of Seattle-based Gardner Economics LLC, a land use, real estate and economic advisory company. “As every rental project is increasing its rents and has been for a long time, ultimately it gets to the point where owning becomes cheaper than renting.”
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| Lennar Corporation's branch office in San Ramon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Apartment owners had a net occupancy increase of about 22,600 units, down from a gain of 31,000 units in the second quarter and 36,400 units in the first. A year earlier, occupancies rose by 37,600 units, according to Reis.
‘Depress Demand’
“Low mortgage rates have not prompted many households to buy homes, given expectations that home prices will remain flat, but that trend might finally be shifting,” said Victor Calanog, head of research and economics for Reis. “Single-family rentals also appear to be on the rise. All of these depress demand for apartment rentals.”
U.S. mortgage rates fell to record lows last week as the Fed resumed purchases of mortgage-backed securities. The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan fell to 3.4 percent in the week ended Sept. 27, from 3.49 percent the prior week, according to McLean, Virginia-based mortgage finance company Freddie Mac. It was the lowest rate in data going back to 1971.
The median price of all home sales in August was $256,900, up 17 percent from a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department. The increase was the biggest since December 2004, and an 11 percent gain from July was the largest month-over- month gain in records going back to 1963.
Purchases of new U.S. homes rose 28 percent in August from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said on Sept. 26. August new-home sales held close to a two-year high, with sales falling 0.3 percent to a 373,000 annual pace after a revised 374,000 rate in July that was the strongest since April 2010.
Builders Benefit
“Not only are our sales margins and backlogs improving, but the beginnings of a sense of visibility are coming back to underwriting land acquisition and planning for the future,” Stuart Miller, chief executive officer of Lennar, said on a Sept. 24 earnings call. “The homebuilding business is beginning to revert to normal and that’s positive for the U.S. economy in general.”
It’s a negative, however, for apartment owners. The 0.1 percentage point drop in multifamily vacancies in the third quarter compares with a 0.35 percentage point average decline each quarter from the prior three months since 2010, according to Reis.
The growing pool of young adults entering their prime apartment-renting years, generally 20 to 34, along with the U.S. housing collapse and a paucity of new apartment buildings had lured investors to multifamily properties, driving prices of apartment buildings to record highs as single-family home prices languished.
Apartment REITs
The Bloomberg Apartment Real Estate Investment Trust Index (BBREAPT) is down almost 10 percent from its July 17 high. Since the end of 2009, the apartment REIT index has returned 78 percent including dividends, more than twice the return from hotel and office REITs, and higher than the 62 percent increase in the broader Bloomberg REIT Index. (BBREIT) Malls were the only major category that beat apartments since the end of 2009, with the Bloomberg Mall REIT Index returning 106 percent.
“The apartment market has enjoyed the strongest recovery,” Luis Mejia, director of multifamily research for Washington-based real estate research firm CoStar Group Inc. (CSGP), said in an Oct. 1 report. “In fact, the recovery has been so strong that, on the national aggregate level, this asset class has fully recovered.”
As home prices rise, prospective buyers gain the confidence to get into the market, pulling them away from renting, said Gardner, the real estate consultant.
Growth Peaks
“Stability in home values may get some people off the fence,” Gardner said. Rising prices and the swelling supply of new apartments over the next several years probably mean “the rate of rental growth has likely peaked,” he said.
Even Barry Sternlicht, the Starwood Capital Group LLC founder who got his start buying distressed apartments in the early 1990s during the savings-and-loan crisis, is hedging his bets.
Through his publicly traded Starwood Property Trust Inc. (STWD), Sternlicht has been buying foreclosed homes to rent as he waits for greater price appreciation. In May and June, Starwood Property acquired 252 foreclosed houses for $27.3 million, according to a regulatory filing. Starwood Capital, a private- equity firm, acquired about 18,000 lots for developing single- family homes from 2008 to 2011 as prices bottomed out, said Chris Graham, a managing director at the Greenwich, Connecticut- based company.
‘Slow Down’
“You can buy homes now -- perfectly reasonable, solid homes -- at significant discounts to replacement costs, on the order of 30 to 40 percent less,” Graham said in a telephone interview. “We’ve always liked apartments. We like the stability, we like the cash flow and we like the ability to add value. I’m not suggesting the apartment market’s going to go into decline. I just think it’s going to slow down.”
Apartment landlords’ asking and effective rents rose at a “marginally slower” rate in the third quarter, Reis said. Asking rents climbed 0.8 percent from the second quarter, and effective rents -- how much tenants pay after such incentives as a free month -- gained 0.9 percent.
New supply remained muted last quarter, with 13,531 apartment units coming online, little changed from the 13,370 units added in the second quarter. The pace of new construction through three quarters of this year shows it’s picking up, toward an annualized total of 48,900 units, up from 41,900 units in 2011, according to Bloomberg calculations using Reis data.
‘Veritable Avalanche’
“Demand for apartments still clearly outstrips supply growth,” said Calanog, Reis’s research director. “There is cause for concern in the near term that demand is abating for multifamily, just as a veritable avalanche of new projects begins to open their doors early next year.”
Apartment construction in the U.S. is rebounding from a 50- year low in 2009, according to Census Bureau data, as developers race to fulfill demand.
“Apartments have been under-supplied over the last three years,” said Graham of Starwood Capital. That’s “led to significant increases in performance.”
U.S. development this year will be almost one-third less than the 10-year annual average, Graham said.
Apartment Purchases
Starwood Capital, which has been “actively” acquiring apartment properties since the beginning of 2010, owns about 20,000 units in the U.S., including about 12,000 units it bought in the past five months, mainly through the May acquisition of PJ Finance Co. out of bankruptcy with Gaia Real Estate, Graham said.
Apartment-building landlords have benefited from rents and net operating incomes rising about 7 percent to 8 percent a year since 2010. That might be poised to slow in light of meager job growth and new supply.
“What’s been happening in apartments the last three years has been great and we’ve seen that in our portfolio as well,” Graham said. “The only thing that could make that continue is if we had tremendous job growth kick in.”
Reis estimates apartment vacancies probably will decline further this quarter while staying above 4 percent. Benefiting apartment owners are the numerous obstacles to homebuying that remain for many people, said Gardner, the real estate consultant.
“Can they qualify for a mortgage, can they afford a down payment?” Gardner said. “Are we losing more people to homeownership than we have coming into the workforce? No, probably not yet. However, if rates stay down as we now anticipate, as the Federal Reserve keeps buying mortgages, then I think it’s likely.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Hui-yong Yu in Seattle at hyu@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net
By Hui-yong Yu
Taken from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-03/landlord-gains-slow-as-homebuying-tops-renting-mortgages.html
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