What We Can Learn From C&W's Multifamily Portfolio
Pick up clues of larger trends by examining the results of a national property manager’s portfolio of 182,000 units.
There’s a lot to be learned from third-party data sources in any area of CRE, including multifamily. But that is data available to everyone. Cushman & Wakefield gathered data from across the 182,000-unit portfolio of properties that it manages for clients. The company looked for key trends.
Briefly, they say the year started strongly. “The market has pulled back from the 2021 levels, but our portfolio’s performance does not reflect recessionary conditions,” they wrote. “We’ve noticed a rebound in trade outs, resilient occupancy, reduced concessions, and even better performance among the more than 8,000 units we manage in the build-to-rent (BTR) space.”
Something surprising was that occupancies have held up so far, despite the increased supply from record deliveries in 2023 and 2024. “At the national level, the U.S. has seen occupancy continue to degrade—overall occupancy is down 130 basis points (bps) over the past year, while stabilized occupancy is down 65 bps,” they wrote. Cushman & Wakefield said that its portfolio saw occupancy increase by 176 basis points, year over year.
It is important to remember that a national average would include every market and type of multifamily property in the country. Chances are likely that Cushman & Wakefield’s client roster doesn’t represent the broader market, so expecting similar results would be statistically unrealistic.
They’ve also seen lease trade outs begin to accelerate during the spring and expect the trend to continue through the summer. “Much of the rebound can be attributed to new lease trade outs,” they wrote. “Through the fall and winter, they dipped into negative territory, but they have rebounded with vigor in 2024. This too has outperformed the U.S. average, which also has shown a bounce back, albeit smaller than what our portfolio has demonstrated.”
In the build-to-rent part of the portfolio, rent growth has outpaced the national trends even with 20% of inventory being under construction. BTR rents, according to CoreLogic, were up 3.4% year over year in April. Overall multifamily growth was 1.5%. In Cushman’s portfolio, the BTR portion had a 185-basis point better position in delinquency rates over the entire portfolio.
Also, delinquency rates continued to fall for BTR and the overall portfolio as some bad debt was resolved.