Dive Brief:
- Apartment sales volume fell 25% year over year to $8 billion by 2025, declining across all subtypes, according to a report shared by data firm MSCI Real Assets with Multifamily Dive.
- Real Capital Analytics’ commercial property price indexes for multifamily were down 0.1% year over year, according to MSCI.
- Mid- and high-end trades fell 39% year-over-year to $2.7 billion in January. This was more than double the decline seen in garden property transactions, which fell 15% year-on-year to $5.3 billion. Apartment entity-level deals fell 64% year-on-year to $0.6 billion, while individual asset sales declined 18% to $7.4 billion, according to MSCI.
Diving knowledge:
As the year approaches, multi-family professionals were optimistic this transaction volume would increase after a couple of disappointing years.
“At some point, the market is going to let loose,” Matt Ruesch, co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based investment firm Broad Creek Capital, told Multifamily Dive last year. “I think a lot of people expected that to happen in 2025, but there’s also been a lot of volatility in the market.”
Prices have risen steadily over the past few months, suggesting that the drop in sales in January is not due to a sudden lack of investor confidence. “The momentum for price growth is healthy, however, with monthly rates improving in each of the nine months,” according to MSCI.
While the dollar volume of completed deals fell in the first month of 2026, February brought news that closings could pick up later in the year. Last week, Veris Residential announced it was being acquired by a consortium of investors led by Affinius Capital in partnership with Vista Hill Partners in a $3.4 billion cash transaction.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to approval by Veris shareholders and other customary closing conditions. If this happens, April, May or June will increase sales.
Other institutional buyers may also be more active this year. In its recent report, MSCI noted that such investors accounted for 25% of purchases but only 19% of disposals last year. In previous years, apartment watchers had noted that these companies had been wary of making big deals.
“There was growth in apartment sales throughout 2025, but the mix of active players in the market was changing, with institutional capital regaining prominence,” MSCI wrote.
MSCI also noted that private investors were responsible for 65% of all acquisitions through 2025. However, they were responsible for 67% of sales, technically reducing their exposure.
In recent years, with institutions largely out of the market, private investors have had the opportunity to acquire assets. That could be coming to an end soon.
“Our real The main indicator is how active they’re sources of institutional capital — insurance companies, opportunity funds, endowments, pension funds,” Security Properties CEO Dan Byrnes told Multifamily Dive last fall. “How strong is their appetite for the multifamily product? And it hasn’t been stronger at any time in recent years.”
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