The rising interest rate environment of late 2022 and early 2023 has had a significant impact on commercial real estate activity. While prices have not declined as much as some analysts expected, transaction volume has waned as buyers and would-be sellers are likely finding it difficult to find an acceptable price for both sides. U.S. commercial real estate investment volume fell by approximately 57% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same quarter in 2022.¹

2022 has seen an abrupt end to the era of historically low interest rates, which began in earnest in 2009. The increasing cost of capital has had significant impacts throughout the economy and certainly will continue to do so into the future. One area directly affected is the cost of housing, where interest rates on a 30-year mortgage have increased from under 3% to over 6% in less than a year.¹

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, inflation concerns, and the war in Ukraine illustrate, it can be difficult to decide where and how to invest money in volatile environments. As we like to say, we don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future; instead, we focus on the bigger picture to help us identify opportunities. We believe that the multi-family sector – long a bedrock of our real estate investment strategies – deserves investors’ attention in 2022.

In our previous blog, we covered the phenomenon of how a macro real estate bull market erupted from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, as we (hopefully) begin to come out the other side, the question becomes: how should an investor approach this environment?

Across the board, real estate prices have been increasing, and multi-family assets are no exception. These higher prices have investors looking at low purchase cap rates. Certainly, these factors need to be considered; however, we also believe they should be put into context with what may be on the horizon for multi-family assets.   

The fallout from a Black Swan event, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can manifest itself in counter-intuitive ways. The economic devastation seen throughout the world in 2020 is undeniable; yet, amidst the havoc, we also witnessed one of the biggest booms in housing prices in U.S. history. According to the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which tracks price changes of single-family homes, housing prices rose 9.5% from November 2019 to November 2020. How does this happen while we’re simultaneously dealing with the worst pandemic in 100 years?

Recently, the White House released the details of President Biden’s proposed $1.8 trillion American Families Plan. The President’s proposal outlines several tax increases intended to help finance parts of this monumental spending—including changes to 1031 exchanges that, if passed, will severely limit the ability of everyday Americans to complete an exchange.

While it wasn’t obvious at the time, it’s now clear that the COVID-19-induced sell-off this past spring created one of the best stock buying opportunities of our lifetime—the S&P 500 is up nearly 65% from the low and the Nasdaq is up roughly 80% over the same time. The tectonic shift in our economy also set some stocks skyrocketing; as of January 31, 2021, Zoom is up 235%, Moderna is up 712%, and Tesla is up nearly 1,000%!¹

An alternative investment is an investment that does not fall into the traditional asset class of stocks, bonds, and cash. The most common types of alternative investments are precious metals, oil and gas, venture capital, hedge funds, and real estate. An investment made into a DST to complete a 1031 exchange, for example would be considered an alternative investment. 

Two of the more popular investment options available to 1031 exchangers are the triple net (NNN) lease and the Delaware Statutory Trust (DST). At Chicagoland 1031 Exchange, we’re often asked how the two investment approaches compare. To help answer that question we thought a post highlighting some of the similarities and differences would be beneficial.

July 15th is likely a day circled on the calendar of many people looking to complete a 1031 exchange.  When the IRS issued Notice 2020-23, exchange transactions that fell between March 31, 2020 and prior to July 15, 2020 saw their deadline extended to July 15, 2020. In light of the COVID pandemic, the IRS issued this notice to provide extra time to complete an exchange.  Certainly, I think we all were hopeful that by this time the worst of the pandemic would be behind us. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.