Younger Partners is capitalizing on the strength of the multifamily industry, bulking up its offerings with a new multifamily team. Lew Wood and Bob Helterbran, two multifamily investment sales veterans, will lead the team focusing on development, investment sales and research.

“Multifamily is the No. 1 commercial real estate market in DFW and nationally,” said Wood, a 38-year industry veteran.

New headquarter relocations are starting to open, particularly in the northern parts of the Metroplex, expanding employee bases, but single-family housing is scarce. Wood said multifamily developers are behind the curve on finding new locations to build, and are starting to look at old multifamily properties or even shopping centers to redevelop. He said his team will focus on the suburbs as core submarkets like Uptown are saturated.

“I think we’ll see some slowing in the core, with most of the growth moving north,” Wood said. “The challenge is that all of the available multifamily dirt probably has someone looking at it right now or it’s under contract. There are only a few locations north, which is forcing us so far out that we’re approaching the Oklahoma border.”

Wood also foresees more growth in South Dallas and Grand Prairie, based on the explosive industrial development pipeline there.

“South Dallas is a largely unproven market for multifamily, but the pricing is good and there is a deep market that is underserved,” Wood said. “It’s a cycle I’ve seen for many years: multifamily follows industrial and with this substantial new industrial growth, you’ll see the multifamily and then retail and office will follow.”

Wood and Helterbran have several Class-A transactions underway, but Wood thinks the Class-B market may see the strongest movement in DFW today, with the Class-C market coming right behind it. He expects to work heavily with institutional buyers, as they make up the biggest chunk of acquisitions or are providing significant equity to operating partners, including backing small to midsize developers.

Helterbran has largely been working on his own on multifamily deals since he joined Younger Partners in 2015. Besides Wood, Younger Partners brought on research analyst Cole Bradford to focus on multifamily. Wood said the team will lean on Younger Partners' land division to locate multifamily sites for developers.