Yardi Matrix senior analyst Doug Ressler was recently featured on the RealCrowd Podcast with CEO Adam Hooper. During the 40-minute conversation, the duo covered multifamily market trends and investment strategy, focusing on pandemic impacts.
Ressler and Hooper discussed the impact of demographic shifts, such as limited inbound immigration to the U.S., outbound migration from gateway cities and the impact of remote work policies.
“From a high level, what we’re seeing is that the recent year and half has really pushed the cycle in terms of time,” Ressler said. “It has been able to incent things that heretofore would have taken multiple years to accommodate.”
The longer-term impacts will be dependent on how many workers continue to do their jobs remotely and how many will ultimately return to the office. Those transitions are beginning to take place now as U.S. vaccination rates rise.
One regional trend that Matrix has observed, in conjunction with renter data from Yardi’s RentCafe online listing platform, is the relatively short distances that many renters have relocated, typically in search of lower rents and larger units while working from home.
“If I were to look at the Bay Area, somebody may be looking for a better price than San Francisco and settle on Oakland. The gateway markets, we think, are going to see a recovery. It’s just a duration shift, based on working from home and what people are doing to do,” Ressler said.
Another pre-pandemic issue that will continue to be a hot topic in multifamily is affordable housing (Class B and C).
“The Southwest and the Southeast markets look good in terms of overall rental rate increases, but a lot of the demand is in workforce housing, and that’s not where a lot of the supply is coming in,” Ressler noted.
You can listen to the conversation in its entirety below:
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