All the apartment news that's fit to print
Nobody knows the Portland apartment market better than our friend Mark Barry does. He's been appraising area apartment complexes, and writing about trends in the apartment market, for decades. His newsletter is on line these days, and it makes for a fascinating read. Some highlights of his latest issue:
-- It's a landlord's market right now, but that should end by late next year.
-- Home ownership is actually starting to pick back up.
-- Older apartment units are not appreciating all that much, particularly in the suburbs.
-- Demand among landlords for lower-quality apartments is weak.
But overall, it's been good times lately in the landlord world:
The apartment market had everything going for it in 2012, with increasing rents, increasing income, low vacancies, readily available financing, relatively little new inventory coming on the market, and good investor demand.
Barry even quotes this blog at one point. The guy has excellent taste.
| Posted at 11:43 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (4)
I can't wait to see if the plan to tear down a single family dwelling in NW and throw up a 55-unit, 150-sf per unit hive will actually happen. This was recently written up in the February issue of the NW Examiner. The developer has already inflicted several of these on Seattle and plans to erect more than one in Portland. Even the developer admits that the tenants won't spend much time in a place that's hardly big enough to turn around in and has nothing but an area to sleep and a bathroom (there will be a common kitchen space on each floor). Developer sez the tenants will spend time in cafes. And of course no parking. They talk about the tenants being students and service industry people from Good Sam and the various restaurants in NW Portland. Good luck with that at $750 and up per apartlet. If this is the future, I don't want to go there.
Posted by NW Portlander | February 4, 2013 6:09 PM
This is a useful post for me, thanks.
Posted by al m | February 4, 2013 6:12 PM
The "housing recovery" is moving fastest in multi-family residential units.
http://www.divisionofhousing.com/2013/01/housing-starts-up-in-west-region.html
So you should have parking lot free, architectural wonders to write about for some time to come.
Posted by Newleaf | February 4, 2013 7:26 PM
So when people get tired of living in places they can barely turn around in, they can head out to the 'burbs for more space at a lower price. I don't sympathize with anyone who lives in one of these shoeboxes - it is a choice after all.
Posted by Nolo | February 5, 2013 1:24 AM