How the Top Emerging Markets on the West Coast Stack Up
Investors are targeting Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Phoenix, but how do these growing markets compare?
“All three markets have strong potential for long-term growth,” Jordan Fisher, principal at Next Wave Investors, tells GlobeSt.com. “By deepening our foothold in these key markets, we can continue to execute on our strategy, through which we target opportunistic and value-add multifamily investments in strong secondary markets throughout the Western U.S.”
Next Wave recently acquired properties in all three markets, which included entry into Phoenix. “The Phoenix market is exceptionally strong,” says Fisher. “We see tremendous opportunity there based on the market’s high-quality job growth, which is fueling demand for appropriately priced and well-maintained multifamily housing.”
In Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, job growth and supply-demand imbalance are the key drivers of growth. “Salt Lake is booming in terms of high wage, technology, and professional job growth. Of the three markets, it is also seeing the largest amount of new supply relative to the size of the market,” says Fisher. “Las Vegas is also posting tremendous job growth with relatively lower new supply, yet many of the jobs are lower wage service sector jobs.”
Next Wave isn’t the only value-add investor active in these markets, and as a result, there is fierce completion for opportunities, particularly for value-add deals. “Value-add opportunities in the multifamily sector are becoming increasingly scarce,” says Fisher. “Investors continue to seek out properties where value creation is possible, and we are even seeing relatively new construction billed as “value-add” to capture the attention of those investors.”
The firm has focused on developing broker relationships to win deals. “Equally important is our ability to be a good buyer. In the current ever-tightening market, many buyers can’t deliver what they initially promise,” says Fisher. “We can. Next Wave has a long track record of successful closings, and we continue to seek out strong sellers with whom we can negotiate repeat purchases based on our strong reputation and surety of closing.”