Are we overbuilding multifamily? Or just the wrong kind? via Ashworth Partners

At a Seattle apartment building investment conference recently one of the main speakers was saying that everyone who’d ever held a hammer, and their brother was trying to build apartments. That really struck a nerve in my market cycle conscious brain and was looking to get some perspective on that when a CBRE piece crossed my desk with this chart on it:

So while new unit construction starts are up significantly from the 2009 lows they are still well below the 89-08 average of about 250k. More importantly in relation to demographics we will be seeing increasing demand from growth in two of the prime renter groups, my exec sum from the piece below:

Three trends will be particularly relevant to apartment building investment and construction:
* Growth in the population aged 25-34 (“echo boomers”)
* Decline in the population aged 45-54
* The transition of “baby boomers” into the over-65 demographic.

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