Should Apartment Landlords Worry About an Improving Housing Market? via NREIonline.com

In last month’s column, we argued that the strong multifamily market will continue on despite the flood of new supply coming online in the following years. This month, we tackle another source of concern for landlords and apartment investors. Could further improvements in the housing market dent the current upswing in the apartment market?

Home prices and sales have recently passed what many believe to be their cyclical trough, coinciding with a slowdown in demand for apartments that was visible in third quarter data. The timing of both these occurrences suggests that an upturn in the single-family housing market may be contributing to slowing improvements in multifamily fundamentals.

Housing market data releases have been uniformly positive in recent months. Home prices, as represented by the S&P/Case Shiller Composite 20 Index, having been increasing on a month-to-month basis for six straight months. More importantly, year-over-year price growth turned positive during the summer and his been increasing in each month since then.

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