Willy Walker
Analyst · Wells Fargo
So Chuck, I was talking yesterday with somebody who had in front of them tremendous amount of data off of CoStar terminal. And during the conversation, they started talking about rents declining in San Francisco by 3% during the month of January. And this person started going on and on about how San Francisco fundamentals are still very strong, but 3% rental decline in January was concerning. And during the course of the conversation, he said, oh, hang on a second, month-to-date in February, rents in San Francisco are actually up 4%, so the whole 3% slop off in January has already gotten back into the rents in the first 1.5 weeks of the next month. I think its way too early to if you will declare victory or defeat as it relates to what this cycle is going to do. I think the biggest thing to look at is the following. Leading into the last recession in 2008, you didn’t have any of the fundamentals in rental growth that you have seen over the last several years and you also didn’t have nearly as tight a housing market. You got a lot of supply of single-family housing. And as a result of that, people had alternatives and some multifamily properties didn’t fare well in 2009, 2010 although as you know multifamily held up better than any other commercial real estate asset class. Given the rental growth that people have seen over the last several years, as well as – and by the way that person yesterday pointed out that rents in San Francisco have gone up by over 50% in the last 10 years. The rental growth you have seen, the very, very high occupancy levels in multifamily properties and the lack of supply of single-family housing makes it so that, as this economy moves forward, whether it’s at a 2% GDP growth, 1% GDP growth or heaven forbid, it goes negative. We are looking at very strong demand for rental housing. And so yes, there are some markets that have fallen off, but I think it’s a little bit too early to declare whether they are going to see longer term trends continue forward. Clearly, there has been a lot of condo development in Miami, which could impact rents in Miami. We haven’t seen it so far. Clearly, oil and gas is going to impact Houston. Houston rents have held up, although Houston office vacancies have spiked. So if you see Houston office vacancies go from 11% to 15%, which we have, that’s clearly going to have some impact on the overall housing market. But when and to what degree is, I do not know.