News
Old and Beautiful
December 6, 2012
| With all the talk of building new multifamily, Essex Property Trust has come up with an original idea: vintage shopping. |
 |
| "Oldies but goodies," is how Essex's Bryan Meyer described the company's acquisition strategy at our Second Annual Multifamily Summit last week at the Four Seasons. And renovating may become part of the game plan. Trying to figure out a relationship between cap rates, job growth, and supply is part of the equation, too. (If Bryan's vintage clothing sensibilities are as good as his building ones, we're taking him shopping with us.) |
 |
| The banker's take: With all those deals flying around, developers have developed a "need for speed," says Chase's Nicholas Bley; he notices more clients looking for the 40-day deal. As we move into 2013, he thinks financing will continue to be there. "I still see a lot of people who are looking for fixed-income investments," he says. For 2014 and 2015, he's subdued but "cautiously optimistic." (We're told the caution has nothing to do with the impending Mayan apocalypse.) |
 |
| The panelists were bullish on multifamily, but the crowd of nearly 300 had differing opinions. We snapped Union Bank's Jason McCalpin, right, with James Bodoia of VIA Architecture and Blaine Wolfe of Absher Construction (the money, the architect, and the contractor all at one table, and someone invited orange juice). Jason's feeling is that apartments may be reaching the crest of the cycle. "Aspects of the multifamily market, such as cap rates, are looking a lot like they did in 2006," he says. "I don't know if bubble is the right word, but there's some concern out there about overbuilding in some submarkets." |
