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Multifamily Minute Reader Reflections: How Our Investments Help Our Communities
Ignoring the investment returns, multifamily properties play an important, positive role in our society. Find out what you felt the biggest impacts are.
Start Your Application and Unlock the Power of Choice$5.6M offered by a Bank$1.2M offered by a Bank$2M offered by an Agency$1.4M offered by a Credit UnionClick Here to Get Quotes!Multifamily properties are great investments. Obviously, you know that — that's why you're here.
But they produce much more than financial returns. The right apartment building can transform a neighborhood in many ways.
In our last issue of the Multifamily Minute, I asked you: What do you see as the primary benefit of your multifamily assets, ignoring the returns?
Survey Results
There was one clear winner.
Benefit | Percent of respondents |
|---|---|
Increased affordable housing | 74% |
Community revitalization | 4% |
Economic boosts | 9% |
Environmental efficiency | 3% |
Increased social cohesion | 0% |
I don't concern myself with these benefits. | 1% |
Other | 9% |
All of us know there's a serious shortage of housing across the country. That's not just in multifamily, either.
Owning and operating an apartment building is one of the best ways to create and retain housing. And even if it's luxury housing, that has knock-on effects in creating more housing that's affordable to more renters.
I don't think I need to go deep into an economics lesson here, but in brief:
Virtually every state, city, town, and neighborhood has a shortage of available housing. It's obviously more severe in some places than others, but the baseline fact is that we don't have enough housing, and we're not building enough new housing.
At the same time, housing is disappearing every year. I often talk about oversupply, but that's purely a short-term phenomenon. An oversupply issue today doesn't mean we can stop building housing for a few years — at least not without seriously detrimental side effects.
As buildings get older, as properties are demolished to make way for newer projects (that may or may not be apartment buildings), and as some places get converted, there's a loss of units — unless we keep building.
Sure, most new projects are upscale assets. They aren't financially viable any other way, thanks to soaring construction costs. But the increase of supply at the top of the quality spectrum does have an impact at the other end.
This whole note, more than anything, then, is to say thanks for helping out with our housing supply. Whether you're operating a Class A or a Class D, it helps your neighborhoods and cities in ways that are both easy and difficult to measure.
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Our Previous Survey
Last time around, I asked where you were looking to buy this year. There were a wide range of responses, but a few states really jumped out of the list.