2026 Multifamily Leadership Series: Andrew Kadish, CAPREIT

The apartment sector is the focus for the fourth year of Connect CRE’s annual Leadership Series. We invited 18 multifamily heavyweights to provide their unfiltered views of the current market, its challenges and opportunities. The insights of these power players have been collected in a downloadable report, and we’re also presenting them individually, in alphabetical order. Here, Andrew Kadish, CEO and CIO of CAPREIT, provides insights.

Are the markets and products you’re investing in and developing changing? 

No. The capital flows that we are seeing across the industry are confirming our firm’s existing thesis rather than challenging it: Mid-Atlantic and northern Midwest exposure and value-add Class B at workforce price points. Meanwhile, “Capital A” affordable housing has bipartisan policy tailwind and growing institutional interest. 

Will we see an increase or decrease in rent prices this year? 

I would project a modest increase in rents this year, particularly in the latter half of the year. The Sunbelt is still absorbing the wave of new supply built in the past few years, so positive rent growth will be pushed to late 2026. I see the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest running materially better with tighter supply and less concession drag. 

Lower-income households spend more of their income on paying rent. Where does a solution lie? 

Supply: the structural fix. This is the only lever that addresses the underlying scarcity, but it operates on a five- to 10-year lag and is fought hardest at the local level, where it has to win. 

Production subsidy: LIHTC is the workhorse. Expansion of the 4% and 9% credits, plus state credit stacking, is incremental but real. 

Preservation: the underrated lever. Naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) is being lost faster than LIHTC is produced. Recapitalization, right-of-first-refusal programs, and tax-abatement preservation deals would be enormously beneficial in ensuring larger amounts of housing supply for lower-income households. 

Give your young self some advice. 

Say yes when the cost is mostly your ego and the upside is a door you can’t see yet. The dinner with someone 20 years older, the conference where you know no one, the panel you felt underqualified for—most inflection points don’t announce themselves. In fact, they’ll likely look more like inconveniences. Feeling out of your depth is usually a sign you’re in the right room.  

There are exceptions to this, especially if you’re saying “yes” to circumvent having a hard conversation. That’s not courage, it’s avoidance, which drains you rather than stretches you. Learn the difference early.  

And always answer the email within 24 hours. 

CAPREIT is a vertically integrated owner and operator of affordable, workforce and market-rate multifamily housing across the U.S. The North Bethesda, MD-based firm manages more than 14,000 units, from garden-style apartments and mid-rises to single-family build-to-rent communities.

Click here to read the series.