Last week, Yardi Matrix hosted three webinars that provided insight on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the self storage, multifamily and commercial real estate markets. Let’s look at the insight on the commercial market, which is extensive. This post will cover the office market – a follow-up on industrial and retail can be found here. National overview For most sectors of commercial real estate, the next four to eight weeks will be tough. Due to state public health mandates, up to a quarter of the country’s economy has shut down, which will result in double digit GDP drops. The travel, hospitality, and restaurant industries have been the hardest hit, affecting about 30 million people. The United States Department of Labor reported 6.6 million new jobless claims in March. While outlook for Q2 and Q3 is not encouraging for all sectors, a few sectors are functioning if not thriving. Agriculture, industrial, distribution, and construction are among the sectors that are stable or growing during the pandemic. For sectors that are suffering, analysts forecast a dip in economic performance rather than a long-term decline. How much and how broad of a dip is still up for debate. The peak and denouement of the pandemic are uncertain, and business impacts will follow. In response, Congress has passed a $2T CARES Act stimulus package to offset economic decline and aggregate demand. The Federal Reserve rolled out several initiatives for small businesses totaling $350 billion. Large business can take advantage of nearly direct access to federal resources for capital. Efforts to stave off business bankruptcies are accompanied by consumer aid efforts. Though consumer spending is being redirected, it is only moderately reduced. The big question on everyone’s mind: can businesses stay open and recall workers when this is...

Good leadership depends on good data. Because without data, as the saying goes, you’re just another person with an opinion. Thing is, everyone wants good data for making better business decisions. But not everyone wants to collect, clean, graph and dissect their datasets. Part of the issue is the sheer abundance of information, especially in senior living. From your standard financial metrics to qualitative measures like care level, there’s always something extra to track down. Some staff may not even know where to find the right numbers in the first place. Then there’s the lack of clarity. How do you accurately organize and analyze what you have? Giant spreadsheets of columns and rows are not the easiest to understand, nor are they very shareable. The current state of senior living business intelligence It’s a tricky situation that senior living providers have approached in a couple ways. Manually creating reports: The most common method. You (or your staff) spend days’ worth of preparation before big meetings, pulling numbers from siloed systems, cutting and pasting inside spreadsheets. When you have monthly or even weekly calls that require up-to-date numbers, this is a significant time sink. Adapting third-party tools: Today’s business intelligence software options are powerful, but they are general-purpose tools. Which means long implementation and customization, trying to fit the product to senior living. Some organizations even require a dedicated full-time employee to manually upload data and manage the solution. Thankfully, the future of business intelligence in senior living looks brighter. Introducing a smarter solution for senior living data analytics Your data is now open for business. Make smarter, faster decisions with actionable information for your entire portfolio through Yardi Senior IQ. Designed specifically for senior living providers, Senior IQ surfaces your data in dashboards, tiles...

The Yardi Matrix research team delivered an insightful presentation on the state of the national self storage market on March 31, with one of the primary themes being the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have on the industry. Though the ultimate result of this unprecedented situation will roll out in the coming months across all real estate sectors, early indicators suggest that self storage investments may be equipped to weather the storm, the Matrix team reported. Miss the presentation? No problem, you can find the recording here. Jeff Adler, vice president, Yardi Matrix, delivered the hour-long market summary for a record number of Matrix webinar attendees. “From my perspective, consumer demand for self storage is stable or growing at this point in time,” Adler shared. Residential consumers who wanted to move out of storage to save money would have already done so, he commented. The greater industry risk, Adler noted, is from small retail businesses that may use self storage facilities for inventory storage/warehouses, since brick and mortar retail is extensively affected by nationwide non-essential business shutdowns. The coming weeks and months will reveal just how vulnerable such tenants might be. A key factor to watch when assessing the health of the market is business bankruptcies, shared Adler. If states and metros can bounce back quickly and rehire workers, impact will be lessened. But prolonged shutdowns could lead to greater distress and increased impact for the self storage market. From an investment perspective, major REITs have essentially halted their purchases in the self storage market for the time being, shared Jack Kern, director of institutional research for Yardi Matrix. “Nobody is moving forward (with planned transactions),” said Kern in response to a question asked on the webinar. “This may be an opportunity for...

When the COVID-19 calamity began to wreak havoc on daily apartment operations about a month ago, Jamin Harkness, CAM, CAPS, Executive Vice President, The Management Group, Atlanta, knew it would be something he couldn’t handle on his own. With everyone involved in property management putting out their own fires – mostly the same crisis’ he was dealing with – he decided to reach out to seven of his closest peer confidantes in the Atlanta area and arrange a one-hour roundtable call. The goal was information-sharing — learn what was working and what lied ahead – for this unprecedented work interruption. The Management Group is a new, smaller but growing management company that has six communities under development. Call participants represent small-, medium- and large-sized companies. Everyone had something to contribute. For information how to participate, reach out to Harkness at [email protected]. The group discussed high-urgency topics such as working with a skeleton crew, renewals, amenities and evictions, among other things, and decided to make the call a regular, weekly thing. And as the days went by, everywhere they looked, another unique and critical issue arose, so more contributors were needed. Each weighed on their own networks and word of mouth, and by Week 2, there were 32 people on the call. Week 3: 65 Week 4: 108 The greater the number of participants, the greater the information. Harkness, who has been in property management since 1997, serves as organizer, moderator and secretary for the 11 a.m. ET calls. Realizing his phone system and general IT capabilities were unable to bring together a group this large, he reached out to Yardi and had them create a platform to help the calls run more smoothly through Zoom. Realizing that every participant on the call had their...

Want to learn how to create digital content that engages professional learners? The first step is to understand the preferences and habits of adult learners. The 2019 BrightTALK Benchmarks report analyzes data on webinars, online courses, videos and other digital modalities to explore how professionals engage with content. How do professionals engage with content and when? More than 77% of those surveyed spend 2 or more hours per week on professional growth. Nearly 55% engage with webinars regularly, with 6% watching daily, more than 48% watching weekly, and more than 31% watching webinars monthly. Though 91% of respondents opt for webinars, other educational formats performed well. About 68% got information from short videos, 60% from articles, and 54% online courses. The ability to view content on demand was the highest ranked format feature, followed by the ability to watch a recording later. Professionals preferred to engage with live content hosted at 8am in Europe and North America. Though mornings were also popular in the APAC region, afternoons performed equally as well. Weekday events performed consistently well worldwide. Viewers in North America favored Tuesday and Thursday slightly more than other weekdays. Understanding the most favorable times to host live events helps growing organizations successfully schedule content. Discover how Roscoe Properties uses eLearning to onboard new employees during periods of rapid growth. What do professionals value in content? Professionals access digital content for a variety of reasons, but four categories attracted the broadest range of participants.  About 80% of respondents accessed online content to acquire a new body of knowledge or skills followed by 78% who desired to improve their quality of the work. Tips, tricks, and best practices caught the interest of 70% of respondents and industry trends and predictions interested 62% of them. When...

February was the last month of the record long economic recovery before U.S. office workers were largely asked to work from home, which will likely have long term implications for the national office market, Yardi Matrix reports in this month’s National Office Report. The rapid growth of COVID-19 has made it clear the economy has quickly shifted into contraction mode as the nation reacts to an unprecedented pandemic. “This is a rapidly changing situation with no clear timeframe or conclusion, and as of now it’s unclear how long the shelter-in-place orders, social distancing and moratoriums on public gatherings will last or how deep the economic contraction may become,” states the report. Market experts also suspect that the mandatory work from home restrictions may have long term implications for offices, perhaps changing how feasible and desirable workers view remote work, while potentially having more challenging implications for the coworking industry. Office transactions will likely come to a halt for the time being despite record low interest rates and widening cap rate spreads. For the most part, the office market didn’t enter this situation overbuilt or with loans that are overleveraged. This should help activity resume once the crisis subsides. “Owners may be hesitant to lease space to coworking firms that are themselves dependent on short-term leases. Further, remote workers that had utilized cowork­ing space may find themselves making the home office a permanent one over the next couple of months,” states the report. Yardi Matrix will offer a two upcoming webinars next week on the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. real estate market. Join the webinar with multifamily focused insight on Wed., April 1 at 10:30am PST. Join the webinar with a commercial real estate focus on Thurs., April 2 at 12:30pm...

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, using energy efficiently is one of the fastest and most effective ways to save money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs and meet growing energy demand. Yardi has once again been named ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year. The award celebrates companies demonstrating superior leadership, innovation and commitment to environmental protection through energy efficiency and ENERGY STAR. ENERGY STAR provides information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed energy efficiency decisions. Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state and local organizations — including more than 40% of the Fortune 500® — rely on their partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. The award acknowledges Yardi’s effort to educate and support clients with benchmarking services and technology solutions across a variety of real estate sectors. In 2019, Yardi helped more than 100 clients benchmark energy in ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® for over 2,300 buildings, leading to a nearly 110 percent increase from the previous year. Yardi helped clients benchmark water in over 2,000 buildings, a 300 percent increase from 2018. In addition, Yardi actively promotes ENERGY STAR benefits, publishing more than 20 articles and providing resources for benchmarking energy performance and energy management such as  webinars, client conferences courses, executive briefings sessions and other activities. “We are very proud of our clients’ continued success in using ENERGY STAR resources to achieve their corporate and community sustainability goals and we look forward to helping them and the industry reap even more ENERGY STAR benefits going forward,” said Anant Yardi, president and founder of Yardi. The company has earned ENERGY STAR certification for its corporate headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., and helps its real estate clients measure success and provide visibility into their ENERGY STAR...

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a question that kids throughout the nation have considered with light-hearted curiosity. Doctor? Astronaut? Director of an investment management consulting team? That’s is an unlikely response, but Jace Swank has thrived in an unexpected field. Yardi: the right fit Shortly after graduating from UCSB, Swank began his career at Yardi as a technical account manager. About seven years later, he serves as director of consulting practices. He now oversees support and implementations across North America for the Investment Management Suite of products including Investment Manager, Investment Management, and Investor Plus. Though the account manager position interested the recent graduate, he accepted the job offer because of corporate culture at Yardi. “As I asked around and learned more about what Yardi did, I was excited to see the cross hairs between technology and real estate management,” says Swank. “I come from a family of contractors and have always been interested in computers. Using technology to professionally manage properties was of high interest to me.” “Upon further research about the company,” he continues, “I found nothing but great things about the culture and how well Yardi takes care of employees. I can confirm that after nearly eight years here, all my findings were an understatement. Yardi is a great place to be!” Learning investment management firsthand Once he identified the right company, it was time to learn his new role within it. Investment management is new terrain for most entry level new hires. Though the demand for investment management personnel is high, there are surprisingly few programs to prepare young adults for careers in the field. In addition to technical knowledge of the software, discerning clients seek consultants with a firm understanding of their business...

Multifamily property performance has been stellar throughout most of the country. There are, however, distinct regional differences in fundamental measures. Savvy investors examine macro and micro economic trends before making investment decisions. Focus areas include rent growth, occupancy trends, supply growth and transaction activity. By understanding those multifamily trends, property managers can optimize property performance and occupancy to satisfy investors. The IMN Property Manager & Operations Forum – Southwest dove into the nuances of real estate data and how it impacts investors’ decisions. On the panel, “Multifamily Investment Trends & Their Impact on Property Managers,” industry experts identified best practices that can help property managers navigate data to their benefit. Chris Nebenzahl, director of institutional research, Yardi Matrix, was one of the experts on the panel. He explored the benefits of monthly national and metro trends reports, such as the reports Yardi Matrix provides for multifamily. Robust reporting provides insights into the industry that can help property managers make informed decisions. Definitely mess with Texas Texas markets, especially the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, are very strong places to invest. Supported by job growth and ample land, these markets are ripe with potential. There is a lot of capital in play throughout the state, even in smaller markets. The rise of popularity has made finding deals increasingly difficult. “The value-add trade is far less lucrative and easy to find than it was earlier in the cycle,” says Nebenzahl. “Yields are compressing making the value add harder to accomplish.” He adds that since valuations are high, the next decade will be focused on operational efficiencies, “Hold periods will likely extend out, and high equity multiples will be less likely. As a result, cash flow, managing expenses and driving revenue as much as possible will be essential for...

Learning about senior living can be overwhelming, especially to newcomers. It’s an industry people seldom think about until they’re facing the decision to move in themselves or help a parent take the step. Everyone has questions. What it like to live in a community? What’s the difference between all the options? How much does it normally cost? Will Medicare cover it? How do families talk about it? How do they decide? Where do you even start? To answer those  questions, older adults and their families can turn to Where You Live Matters. The website is an online library of educational content about senior living, designed to help people make informed, smart decisions about their housing and health needs. There are tons of articles, infographics and videos on a wide range of topics. The site was launched in 2016 by ASHA, the American Seniors Housing Association, but they’ve been building on it since. In 2018, they added a community search feature so that visitors can look up local options. And last fall, ASHA completely overhauled and re-launched the site. It’s now easier to browse on mobile, and there’s more content than ever. At the time of the website’s launch, ASHA noted that much of the online content about aging was written by marketers, and that academic information wasn’t clear enough for consumers. So they set out to create unbiased, research-based materials that anyone could understand. “Our members and organization are committed to giving consumers across the country a place to learn more about the senior housing landscape,” said David Schless, president of ASHA. “There are resources available, but we’re committed to painting a clearer picture.” And while Where You Live Matters is intended primarily for consumers, senior living providers can benefit too. Educational content for...

Even as communities around the world pull together to battle coronavirus (COVID-19), the outbreak provides fertile ground for scammers. Authorities are striving to keep pace with con artists peddling an array of schemes. For example, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration have sent warning letters to several sellers of unapproved and misbranded products such as teas, essential oils and colloidal silver. The FDA stresses that no vaccines, drugs or investigational products are approved to treat or prevent the virus. “Cybercriminals will often take advantage of trending topics in the news, such as the coronavirus, to try and prey on consumers using fear and urgency tactics,” says Gary McAlum, senior vice president and chief security officer for financial services provider USAA, who was quoted in americanbanker.com. “Nontargeted phishing campaigns using COVID-19 as a lure in the subject line have been observed since January. These cover the range of pre-existing threats out there, including information-stealing malware,” adds Steven Silberstein, CEO of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry consortium that promotes cybersecurity. According to the FTC and other authorities, online communications that should set off alarm bells include: Email from unknown sources. Analyze URLs carefully before clicking on them. If an email comes from a source that you think is legitimate and requests you click on a link, find another way to validate it. Correspondence claiming to be from legitimate sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization. A bogus version of Johns Hopkins University’s popular coronavirus map has been used to embed malware. Offers for treatment or prevention. Solicitations for investment in companies offering in-demand supplies or products pitched as preventing, detecting or curing the virus. Also look out for emails...

By now, you’ve heard about low income housing tax credits (LIHTC). LIHTC can boost revenues up to 9% and offset up to 80% of project costs. But the program brings its own fair share of risks, headaches and complicated paperwork. If you’re considering this funding option for your next project, there are 4 things you should know before diving in. But first, let’s get the know more about why LIHTC is such a valuable resource. The problem: affordable housing shortage The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reports a shortage of 7 million affordable rentals for low-income families. Of eligible families, more than 70% are “extremely low-income households.” That means that they allot more than half of their income to rent payments. Supply growth could ease high rents and potentially alleviate financial strain on many families. Such supply growth would require investors obtain benefits from affordable housing projects. LIHTC steps towards a solution To make affordable housing more appealing, the US government has offered incentives for investors and property managers. These programs offset low rents collected from renters and make it possible for affordable housing to be profitable. The LIHTC program falls into this category. It has promoted supply growth in affordable housing more than any program of its kind. Why is it so successful? The program offers value for investors and property managers: through the state, the program provides tax credits that are sold to investors. Those credits can be used as tax write-offs. They can also be combined with other programs that may make an affordable housing project more profitable. Affordable housing developers can then pursue affordable housing as viable assets, and low-income families can secure a home. Investors have a few options from which to choose. There are two main tiers...

Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared in Vastgoedmarkt, a Netherlands-based real estate magazine. It is reprinted here with permission. Mapping the future of living, working and recreation, will require being responsive to the needs of millennials.  For this, proptech is essential, according to Richard Gerritsen of Yardi. Most of the technology is already available, but the drive to actually apply it to some sectors of the global real estate industry is still missing. Richard Gerritsen has been working for Yardi since 2005, and currently serves as regional director Europe. The American real estate automation supplier is doing well, the regional director says. ‘We started with offices in London and Amsterdam, but Yardi is now also in Germany and Romania, and will soon also be present in France. Our goal was to double our turnover every five years. We succeeded in that and recently, we have been even growing faster than that. Yardi saw its European turnover grow by 44 percent in the year 2019 alone. Now that Yardi is an established party in Europe and in the Netherlands, Gerritsen also sees it as his mission to stimulate more enthusiasm for proptech in the real estate industry. Unlimited possibilities ‘I want to make the industry aware of the great importance of proptech.  When I started at Yardi in 2005, I learned that I shouldn’t use the word software in my conversations with real estate professionals. The software department meant the lads at the end of the corridor where it was always dark. But now, technology and proptech play a much bigger role in (office) life.  Yet technology is still not a popular subject in the boardrooms. This is related to conservatism within the real estate industry, but it is also because those aged over...