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Flipping the Switch: Multifamily Experts See Market Bounce Back
Ric Campo rode out a number of storms in his career. He co-founded Camden back in 1982, then helped take it public 11 years later. Anyone who’s worked in commercial real estate since the early ‘80s has seen the effects of a recession, Campo included, which is why his evaluation of the past 18 months is so good to hear.
“This is the best recovery out of a recession that I’ve ever seen in my business career,” says Campo, Camden’s Chairman of the Board and CEO.
The multifamily firm has developed dozens of luxury apartment communities all over the country — from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Campo says at the beginning of the pandemic, occupancy dropped about 100 basis points.
“When you get down to it, that’s not awful,” he says. “But what happened then was we rebuilt that occupancy in the summer of 2020 and now our national occupancy levels are in the 97 percent range.”
Campo says the turning point really seems to be March 2021. That’s when Camden noticed the biggest bump, especially in its Texas properties. Between Houston, Dallas and Austin, Camden operates nearly 50 multifamily communities in the Lone Star State.
“We were still weak coming out of 2020, then all of a sudden came March. You had more people getting vaccinated, the mask mandates being released and jobs were being added back in Texas overall,” explains Campo.
He says the impact is clear when you compare Q1 occupancy rates to those in Q2. Every single Texas market saw a bump for Camden. Austin went from 96.3 percent to 97.3 percent. Dallas got a boost from 96 percent to 96.6 percent. Houston grew from 94 percent to 95.7 percent. Quarter-over-quarter revenue is up too: 3.6 percent for Austin, 2.7 percent for Dallas and 3.3 percent for Houston. Click to read more at www.rednews.com.
REDnews Houston Awards August 5, 2021 at The Briar Club – Eric Lestin, Cushman Wakefield Presenting & Brandi Smith, KHOU – Emcee
First Look: Victory Park’s Newest Luxury Multifamily Garners Sky-High Rents
Creatively fitting a towering multifamily in a neighborhood like Victory Park required deep thought by international developer Hines and their team of architects and designers. The infill development of a former parking lot on the northeast corner of Nowitzki Way and Victory Park Lane, The Victor is now the tallest building in Dallas’ Uptown—and it’s garnering some of the highest rents in the area at about $370 a square foot.
Typically, such a building would be long and rectangular, much like the high-rises you see in downtown Dallas. But such a design would crowd the neighborhood’s urban fabric, Munoz + Albin Principal Jorge Munoz tells me as we walk along Nowitzki Way to tour the site.
Comprised of 344 luxury residences and adjacent to the American Airlines Center, the 40-story tower blends beautifully into the neighborhood. To do so, designers broke the masing of the tower into two distinct shapes to accentuate its verticality: a thin floating glass volume on the east and a masonry volume on the west. Click to read more at www.dmagazine.com.
Making Mapping Easy: MapRight Offers New Tools for CRE Pros
Who remembers the days of Key Maps? Or, more recently, printing out directions before you headed to a destination? Only in the past 15 years have we been able to rely on applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze.
“If you think mapping is boring or isn’t changing, you’re not paying attention,” says Steve Roberson, CEO & Founder of MapRight, an online and mobile mapping platform. “You used to have to use a paper map. The ability to see yourself on a real-time map has
only existed for maybe a decade.”
His company is taking that evolution even further, allowing clients to navigate and build maps whether they have GIS experience or not.
“One function on the MapRight mobile app allows a subscriber to send an interactive map to somebody. That somebody can get driving directions to a property and view it themselves without the agent even being there,” Roberson explains. “That person can evaluate the property’s boundary, floodplain and things like that. A feature like that had never really even been thought of except in the past decade.”
Roberson unlocked his passion for mapping decades ago as he completed his Master’s in applied geography with a concentration in GIS.
“I was always fascinated with real estate and how mapping interacted with it,” he says.
Real Estate Shakes Off Covid-19
Single-family homes are flying off the shelves. Commercial real estate is struggling.
But whatever you might say about the real estate market, you can bet the situation won’t remain that way for long. Those familiar with the market say residential real estate is already starting to cool off after the boom that started late last year. And yet at the same time, commercial real estate (including offices, warehouses and business sites) is seeing light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel.
Nothing is static in this business. Different types of investments face their own different pressures.
“Last year, there was concern regarding how commercial real estate would weather the pandemic,” says Raj Dhanda, CEO of Black Creek Group, a real estate investment management firm based in Denver. “Despite this concern, we believe fundamentals are healthy, especially in the industrial and multifamily sectors. Commercial real estate is emerging from the pandemic strong and stable, and we are seeing an increasing interest in private real estate.”
“Leadership in the real estate sector can ebb and flow as market forces impact residential and commercial real estate differently,” wrote Cinthia Murphy in a report on ETF.com, a research and analysis firm for the exchange-traded funds market. “If 2020 was a banner year for housing, 2021 is shaping up to be a great year for commercial real estate. Click to read more at www.fa-mag.com.