It is mid-May and in four months you should begin budget planning for 2018. Okay, I am starting this way too early but if you want to make a big improvement in how your company implements budgeting, you’ll need to start laying a good foundation now. Have you been getting the value out of your […]
Property Manager: Time To Start Your Own Firm?
A few weeks ago, we sent an email with tips on how outsourced accounting can help VPs and regional managers within larger management firms start their own companies. We must have hit a nerve. We received dozens of responses from all over the country. It appears to us that the big firms keep getting bigger…but […]

Ascent in Denver
Ascent partners Scott Seegmiller and Mike Ballard were in Denver for BisNow’s Denver Multifamily & Mixed Use event. The standing room only crowd of almost 400 people came to learn about the Mile High City’s hot projects and real estate trends. Mike moderated a lively discussion entitled 2017 Capital Markets Forecast. Speakers included Ken Cope, CIO of Sagebrush; Charlie […]

Scale Up Your Multifamily Operation

A View From The Top: What I Learned from 14,000 Feet
Last summer, I was invited to climb Mount Rainier by Ben Zimmer, CEO of Entrata, a fast growing property management software maker. Mount Rainier is the third most prominent mountain peak in the United States. With a summit of 14,410 feet, Mount Rainier is not only an active volcano, but it is also the most glaciated peak in […]

Is your Plan to Grow by 900% or Lose 95% of your Market Value?
Is it possible? Could your firm lose more than 90 percent of its market value in ten years? Could it actually increase by a factor of nine or more? No firm plans to lose the majority of its market value but many do . . . why? In many cases it is companies that are […]
Freddie Mac’s Multifamily Index Indicates Investing Fundamentals Stronger
For the third consecutive quarter, multifamily investing fundamentals grew stronger in the third quarter, according to the Freddie Mac Multifamily Apartment Investment Market Index (AMLI), both nationally and in each of the 13 metro markets it tracks. AMLI combines multifamily rental income growth, property price growth, and mortgage rates to provide a single index that […]

Freddie Mac Expects To Close 2016 With $55B In MF Originations
GlobeSt.com reports that Freddie Mac expects it will end 2016 having done around $55 billion in mortgage purchases, or originations as the rest of the industry would call it. It will also have done by year-end, give or take, some $50 billion in securitizations. So says David Brickman, executive vice president and head of the Multifamily Business, […]

Costar Says “A Storm is Brewing in Multifamily”
The CoStar Group, the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, published a brief about the multifamily market that states the demand is set to decline in the apartment market. As Millennials get married, start having families, and begin buying homes, demand will decline as a result of this trend. They report […]

Rent Growth and the Widening Gap Between A and C Product
RealPage chief economist Greg Willett shares what is driving the widening gap between A and C product, and how apartment rent growth is likely to progress in the next year or two. Across the 100 largest metro areas in the US, the asking rent gap between the top end and the bottom layer of the […]