Apartment Construction

Let me begin by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. For those of you who regularly read my scribbles, you are used to some pretty meaty topics. In light of the Holidays, this one will be a bit frothier. In each blog that I write there are certain themes which remain pretty consistent. One of my favorites is that real estate development is about the coolest industry on the planet. After all, our job is to make the world a better, more usable, more beautiful place.

Often my intended audience is the real estate developer (my hope is of course that there is some part of my subject matter which translates to my non-developer audience- or at least helps you better understand those temperamental developers who constantly tell you ‘We can’t afford that.’). Today, I would like to remind us all of something that is very easily glossed over as we perform our day-to-day tasks.

By Salvatore J. Friscia, San Diego Premier Property Management, San Diego, CA

Having to make repairs to your rental property should not come as a surprise. For some reason most owners drop the ball when it comes to handling maintenance requests from their tenants. Some owners struggle to understand the importance of addressing repair issues in a timely fashion. They fail to realize how the lack of maintenance affects the condition of their property and ultimately the quality of tenants the property attracts. The owner, not realizing that every rental property regardless of age will have its fair share of plumbing leaks, electrical problems, water heater issues, and broken appliances will either let maintenance repairs linger or handle them in a poor fashion.

Repairs should not to be confused with the normal upkeep such as cleaning, changing light bulbs or plunging a clogged toilet. These issues are the responsibility of the tenant. Repairs can be considered anything a licensed bonded contractor should take care of such as; plumbing, electrical, appliance repair, heating/cooling, flooring, & construction. These types of repairs are best left to the professionals and when handled appropriately, exhibit the owner’s willingness to resolve repair issues properly and in a timely fashion. In some cases a handyman can be useful and worth the small fee to resolve minor repairs. Now, if you normally handle repair issues yourself and have the knowledge and experience to do so then that becomes a judgment call, but most owners would rather sit back and collect checks then make repairs to their rental properties.

It's 2011. The holidays are over. Back to reality, right? To help ease back into work-mode and get a handle on what I need to accomplish this year, I started by making a list. The problem is the list just keeps getting longer and more detailed, making it harder for me to decide what my urgent, top priorities are. As you contemplate the goals you want to achieve this year or simply the things you might want to avoid, a good place to start may not be a list on a piece of paper, but a walk through the kitchen.

Why the kitchen?

The kitchen is a hot-spot for home fires. Cooking, in fact, is the leading cause of all winter residential-building fires. And the winter season brings the highest number of home fires than any other time of year, as reported by the U.S. Fire Administration.* Residential building fire incidence is collectively highest in the three winter months of January, February, and March.

One of the most encouraging results seen in the country's apartment market during 2010's first half was a notable upturn in demand for middle-tier product. Previously, almost all the absorption occurring across the country was being captured at the very top end of the market, reflecting new completions moving through initial lease-up as well as high-end units attracting move-up renters via price cuts.

Looking specifically at 1980s-generation developments, the middle of the product spectrum in most metros, occupancy across the nation as a whole climbed 2 percentage points during 2010's initial six months, improving from 91.7 percent to 93.7 percent. At least a little bit of growth occurred virtually everywhere, and the jump was more than 3 percentage points in select areas like Upstate South Carolina's Greenville area, San Antonio, Kansas City and Nashville.

An especially interesting shift in 1980s-era apartment occupancy registered during recent months in metro Atlanta. While those units were just 91.3 percent occupied as of mid-2010, the performance in the sector improved by 2.9 percentage points from the late 2009 result. Making the change especially intriguing, almost all the upturn occurred in just a few neighborhoods, specifically the arc stretching from Gwinnett County across the Roswell/Alpharetta area and into eastern Cobb County. That's a cluster of product that on the surface would seem to face a particularly difficult road to recovery, since it lies amid a huge selection of now really, really cheap single-family homes offered both for sale and for lease in very large numbers.

While metro Washington, DC seems to rank at the top of the list of just about everyone's favorite apartment markets, current performance stats actually are a little stronger in adjacent Baltimore.

June's occupancy rate in Baltimore's base of about 190,000 apartments stood at an even 96 percent, up 2.1 percentage points from the late 2009 figure and 0.7 points ahead of occupancy in Washington, DC. Neighborhood-level occupancy was right around the 95 percent mark in even the weakest of Baltimore's individual submarkets, and the rate was 97 percent or better in Ellicott City/Columbia and the Towson area.

Just like pretty much every other metro across the country, Jacksonville has seen its apartment market generate some performance momentum so far during 2010. However, this locale took one of the nation's worst beatings during the down portion of the market cycle, so it remains far from reaching healthy status once again.

Apartment absorption in Jacksonville registered at some 2,900 units during 2010's initial six months, far surpassing completions limited to around 500 apartments. Occupancy, then, has made big strides, rising 3 full percentage points since late 2009. Even with that upturn, however, the June occupancy figure was only 89.3 percent. That's the third worst reading across the 64 metros that form the core of MPF Research's national apartment analysis, coming in just ahead of the rates in Houston and Fort Myers.

With overall occupancy so low, it's not surprising that even the top-performing neighborhoods and product niches are struggling. The metro's best neighborhood-level result in submarkets with sizable apartment inventories is the 92.8 percent occupancy in the Mandarin area. Across the various product categories, 1990s-era properties are doing the best with occupancy at 92.5 percent.

While 2nd quarter 2010's 1.2 percent jump in U.S. apartment rents was the first meaningful increase in pricing power seen during the current market cycle, the boost was encouraging widespread. It wasn't just a handful of areas getting back on track ... at least minor upticks occurred almost everywhere.

Across the 64 metros that form the core of MPF Research's apartment market analysis, 56 of them realized effective rent improvement during 2nd quarter, measuring change on a same-store basis. One city (Memphis) registered identical rents in March and June, leaving just seven metros suffering further declines. Quarterly losses of more than 1 percent were limited to Tucson, Las Vegas and New Orleans.

The strong quarterly showing pushed annual rent change into positive territory for a total of 25 metros as of June, up from just seven as of 1st quarter. The nation's top 10 performers for rent growth proved to be an incredibly mixed bunch in terms of general characteristics. They stretched from the East Coast to the West Coast. Some were large, others small. A few maintained their momentum after doing reasonably well during the national downturn, whereas others regained considerable ground that was lost during 2008-2009.

While almost every apartment market across the country has posted notably improved overall fundamentals during 2010, few can match the turnaround seen in Portland. The metro's stats looks good for both occupancy and rent change. And, perhaps most impressive of all, recovery is apparent in every single product niche across every single neighborhood.