Editors’ Weekly News Round Up April 8 – April 12
Peter Linneman and the apartment sector were the main attractions this past week as far as Connect CRE readers were concerned. Linneman’s quarterly appearance on the Walker Webcast—a tradition going back to the webcast’s early days in 2020—invariably draws strong readership among Connect CRE’s national audience, and the real estate economist’s latest conversation with Walker & Dunlop CEO Willy Walker was no exception.
Walker Webcast: Peter Linneman Calms Inflation Fears, Examines Economic and Real Estate Trendswas the most-read Connect CRE story for the week ending April 13. The April 10 webcast occurred a few hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation stood at 3.5%, still far afield of the 2% inflation range the Federal Reserve wants to see before lowering the effective federal funds rate. Linneman and Walker sought to bring clarity to the discussion around the latest Consumer Price Index.
With residential rents comprising 36% of the CPI, the multifamily sector figured prominently in the webcast. The sector was also the basis for the week’s second best-read story, a breaking news announcement that Blackstone would make another entity-level acquisition.
Coming just a few months after the asset management giant agreed to pay $3.5 billion for Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based owner-developer that operates primarily in the U.S., Blackstone struck an even richer deal. As reported in Blackstone Taking Apartment Income REIT Private for $10B, the acquisition will increase Blackstone’s apartment portfolio by more than 25,000 units.
Real estate tied to major league sports has made regular appearances among Connect CRE’s most visible coverage, and it did so again this past week. We reported that the U.S. Soccer Federation broke ground on what will become the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Georgia’s Fayette County. Drawing readership among both Atlanta CRE professionals and our national audience, Work Underway on $200M US Soccer Training Center was the week’s third most-read story.
Moving back into the multifamily space, the California Apartment Association (CAA) alerted its membership that an Assembly bill had advanced with new regulations on how landlords manage security deposits. It also aims to implement new limits on tenant screening fees.
CAA worked with the bill’s sponsor to implement some changes, but the measure still has unfavorable implications for multifamily owners. CA Assembly Bill Advances with New Regs on Security Deposits was the week’s fourth most-read story, drawing its readership strictly from our California newsletter.
Although TruAmerica Multifamily is headquartered in California, it operates on a nationwide basis, and Bob Hart, its founder, president and CEO, is widely recognized as an industry leader. In advance of Hart’s participation at the May 1 Connect Los Angeles in-person event, he provided insights on the current and future state of the market in TruAmerica Multifamily’s Bob Hart Sees Market Moving Back Toward Equilibrium, our fifth best-read story of the past week.
Since California has often been a bellwether state, Connect CRE has shone the spotlight on a program to incentivize housing development in Los Angeles strictly with private funding. It’s known as ED1, after Executive Directive No. 1 signed into law by LA Mayor Karen Bass, and you can read all about the program here.