Sponsored by RealPage
In the multifamily housing industry, key stakeholders often get a skewed picture—relying on data that represents only 5% of relevant metrics—when researching investment opportunities. The result can negatively impact deal flow and, ultimately, ROI.
During these exceptionally challenging times, these stakeholders are now realizing the need for precise and accurate intelligence is more critical than ever for profitability and, in many cases, for survival.
Over the last several months, companies have been discovering the difference RealPage® Market Analytics makes as a market research platform founded on real-time lease transaction data that measures true asset performance. It is the only multifamily intelligence platform that enables 100% visibility into market and submarket performance.
Powered by the industry’s largest lease transaction database—covering over 13M units nationwide—it has been most valuable for helping teams make confident decisions about capital allocation, construction, development, lease-up, acquisition, management and disposition opportunities.
“If you don’t have granular lease transaction data, you’re only seeing a fraction of the picture,” said Scott Herring, RealPage Vice President, Market Analytics. “Relying on asking rents and market syndication data provides an unclear and highly inaccurate picture of what’s happening in the market with your competition.”
Jessica Dakin, the Director of Revenue Management for BH Management, the nation’s ninth largest property management firm, was fervent about her use of the tool: “Market Analytics has been incredible for us. It’s been a hole-in-one the way it’s married the best lease transaction data and other data sources to make it more robust for making solid decisions that help our investors and clients. Our teams feel super confident leveraging it to tell us if we’re doing the right thing.”
Dakin represents only one segment of stakeholders leveraging the tool to inform a view of investment opportunities and asset performance from the floorplan level up that can’t be found anywhere else. In fact, RealPage Market Analytics is most renowned for how it helps stakeholders—owners, developers, investors, brokers, lenders and vendors—at every stage of the deal cycle, from land purchase and acquisition to disposition.
Jordan Moss, Founder, Catalyst Housing Group noted, “RealPage Market Analytics has become our one-stop shop for multifamily market research with tools that provide an instant evaluation of any potential transaction that crosses our desks.”
A deeper dive into the intelligence design reveals how the unique platform is able to track and analyze real estate through the full asset lifecycle: from pre-development to development, acquisition through lease-up, stabilization and renovations, all the way to the sale of the property and new ownership. Stakeholders can easily see who is developing, managing, buying and selling as well as the trends around pricing at apartment communities and cap rates.
Granular sales transaction data is also provided through RealPage’s partnership with Real Capital Analytics (RCA), the industry’s largest database of commercial real estate transactions tracked across all U.S. markets. RCA offers detailed information on property sales, recapitalizations and refinancing. Property pricing and ownership are meticulously researched by RCA’s team of real estate professionals using rigorous methodology.
These insights are integrated with RealPage’s own lease transaction data—demonstrating rent roll, revenue, new lease rent growth, renewal rent growth, retention rates, average vacant days, renewal rent growth, lease revenue change and renter incomes—and culled by a bench of research and analytics teams for analysis. AI-enhanced forecasting models are developed by a renowned team of economists and data scientists.
RealPage Chief Economist Greg Willett has become one of multifamily’s trusted sources on industry market performance, drawing from more than two decades of research experience. He is frequently called upon by leading apartment industry associations and organizations to share market forecasts and discuss industry trends.
Alongside Willett is Jay Parsons, RealPage Vice President of Multifamily Optimization and Deputy Chief Economist, who has spent more than a decade focused on market research and forecasting, revenue management and business intelligence.
When asked about the problem with trusting conventional market research methods like asking rents, Willett noted, “As the apartment market’s performance has dramatically shifted, a big difference is seen in effective asking rents—the price you see on internet listings or hear when inquiring about a property—and rents achieved when new resident leases are actually executed. In some markets, achieved rents for newly-executed leases are falling quite a bit faster than the shifts in effective asking rents would suggest.”
Aimee LaMontagne Baumiller, Vice President, PNC Bank is a top lender who trusts RealPage Market Analytics to guide their investment decisions with its accurate forecasting and econometric models and extensive construction pipeline data that provide valuable support for underwriting capital projects.
"As market researchers guiding the underwriting of high-dollar, complex multifamily deals in a competitive environment, we are expected to produce reports that are both accurate and precise to the penny,” she said. “We highly value RealPage’s data because it provides details on rent rolls, such as lease renewals and true revenues, that simply aren't available anywhere else,” she shared.
Learn more about RealPage Market Analytics and why its intelligence is trusted by multifamily institutions like the NMHC and PREA as well as industry leaders to drive investment decisions that produce higher yield.
