Wall Street may disagree with him, but Hamilton Zanze's Tony Zanze can't wait for interest rates to rise. “I'm looking forward to rates going up," These low rate environments make me nervous,” Tony told our audience last week at our Multifamily & The Condo Revolution event at the Omni Montelucia. (Low-rate environments make him nervouse.) Tony (with Walker Dunlop's Brandon Harrington) says the low rates have a tendency to encourage investors to overpay for properties. And when it comes to multifamily, rising rates raise the threshold by which someone can switch from rental to ownership, so it helps apartments in the long run.
Tony was part of an expect lineup before an audience of more than 250 industry pros, including Brandon, Alliance Residential's Ian Swiergol, Colliers International's Cindy Cooke, Milestone Management's Steve Lamberti and Chicago Title Insurance's David Miller (who moderated). Still, Tony's in the market for buys—eight properties in the past two years, including Los Arboles, which we reported here. “On the Westside, we're much more cautious,” he says. “The verdict's out. I'm not sure what's going to happen out there.”
Steve says he's concerned about rents and revenue, especially with the influx of Class-A apartments in Phoenix. And especially the penchant for investors to push rents up on renovated properties. With average US incomes at $54k/year, and with 24% of the US population with an average of $5k in bad debt, “the question is where are we relative to rent growth? How much is left in the tank for that middle tier of America?”
Cindy (here with Tony) says for multifamily investors, Chandler and Scottsdale are still the “darlings.” But she sees North Phoenix, especially up in Deer Valley, as an emerging market. And don't forget about Tempe, which she says is “on fire,” Mesa and the 101 and 50 connection—all of which are seeing high growth. “Right now, the equity part of the deal is so easy to find. There's a lot of equity out there looking for product,” she says.
