SAN FRANCISCO: Basking In Low Cap Rates
Cap rates are arguably lower than 2007 levels, and the price per unit is high, according to Pacific Urban Residential CEO Alfred Pace at Bisnow's Multifamily Summit in San Francisco. While 17% of the market is luxury renters, all of the new supply meets that luxury demand. Many of those potential renters with high-paying tech jobs are coming from abroad (does that mean you'll have to start putting mayo on your frites?), so that nature of the demand cohort concerns Alfred. It doesn't take a lot of movement in occupancy to destroy landlord pricing power. No REIT operator wants to start a quarterly analyst call with, "Our portfolio is 93% occupied." As soon as that happens in downtown San Francisco, rents will come down.
Walker & Dunlop VP Mark Plenge has seen just about every capital source flood back into the market this year and become more aggressive. Acquisition volume is still lighter than everyone would like it to be. "But we are seeing acquisitions get financed by anybody and everybody... there's a lot of money to bring to the table." Despite the spike, sounds like lessons were learned from the last crash. (We study history in order to avoid repeating it and to read funny names.) He's not seeing over-leveraging or crazy lending like 2005 to 2007. He also doesn't see a catalyst that would drop rents precipitously.
