NAREE Miami Conference Takeaways and Links Include Story Fodder for Build to Rent, Digital Nomads, Social Justice Issues in Real Estate
/By Jeff Collins
Orange County Register
NAREE Board Chair
I’m starting to panic.
My panel on the Surfside condo tower collapse is about to begin, and one of the speakers is missing.
David Haber, a construction and condo association lawyer, was supposed to meet us in the green room, but hadn’t turned up. I called his administrative assistant.
"Where’s David?" I asked.
She couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t reach him either.
So, I walked into the conference room, ready to go on without him. That’s when I saw Haber, standing by the stage.
“I was inside,” Haber said. “I was listening to the conference. It’s really interesting.”
Such was the nature of this year’s NAREE conference, real estate journalism’s first in-person gathering in 2 1/2 years. I noticed that soon after their panels ended, many of our industry speakers joined the audience and stuck around to hear what other speakers were saying.
The conference took place Dec. 7-10 at the Kimpton Epic Hotel in downtown Miami, with panels ranging from single-family rentals to new ways to finance home purchases. Speakers explored lasting changes to suburban home and downtown office design wrought by the pandemic.
Mortgage rates, economic outlooks, foreclosures, apartments, hotels, vacation homes and Caribbean luxury markets all were discussed.
As one conference attendee put it, “I feel like we’re getting all of real estate.”
Yet, the most remarkable thing about the 2021 gathering was none of this was truly remarkable at all. It’s pretty much standard fare for a typical NAREE conference.
What was remarkable was that it took place at all given the uncertainty of COVID and its variants.
But it did. And by the time #NAREE2021 wrapped up on the morning of Dec. 10, 75 speakers had participated in 29 panels.
That didn’t include the tour of Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, where public art and real estate intersect -- or the annual book and journalism awards ceremonies honoring our best work of 2020.
You can learn a lot more about what transpired by searching the conference hashtag: #NAREE2021. And by going to NAREE’s Members Only Tab and clicking on the conference sessions recordings.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
— Build for rent: Landlords will need to build at least 1.7 million new single-family rentals in the next decade to accommodate explosive growth in demand from the millennials needing a house but unable to buy one, RCLCO’s Todd LaRue said. Millennials are reaching a stage where they’re adopting pets, getting married and having children, and they need more space than an apartment. As Todd Wood of single-family home builder Christopher Todd Communities put it, they need “a private backyard and a doggie door.”
— Digital nomads: The apartment industry has been considering a rental housing membership program giving renters the ability to move between communities while working remotely, said Rick Haughey of the National Multifamily Housing Council. A new NMHC survey unveiled at #NAREE2021 showed almost half of all tenants would consider signing up for such a plan.
— Foreclosures: Foreclosures are at their lowest level in 40 years, thanks to rapidly rising home prices and an “unbelievable buildup in equity,” said Michael Fratantoni of the Mortgage Bankers Association. That equity acts as a cushion for homeowners still struggling with finances due to the pandemic. “Foreclosures are not happening now,” Fratantoni said.
— Equity is no guarantee: Surprisingly, while foreclosures are rare, 87% of homeowners now in the foreclosure process have equity in their homes, RealtyTrac data show. “Having equity doesn’t prevent a borrower from defaulting on a loan,” RealtyTrac’s Rick Sharga said.
— Home prices: The year of record-low mortgage rates is ending, meaning the pace of home-price appreciation will slow in 2022. But prices won’t decrease, they’ll just rise more gradually. The National Association of Realtors’ Lawrence Yun predicted home prices will rise 2.8% next year, down from nearly 15% this year. CoreLogic’s Frank Nothaft expects a bigger gain: 7% in 2022, down from 18% as of October.
— Self-storage: The biggest surprise of the pandemic was the performance of self-storage REIT’s, said John Worth of Nareit. Self-storage REIT’s outperformed all other sectors with a 70% return during the pandemic. “As people start to move in the pandemic, some are up-sizing, some are down-sizing,” Worth said. “All the activity we see in the housing market, that drives self-storage demand.”
— Industrial space: Supply chain backlogs and an increase in online shopping have boosted demand for industrial space to stockpile goods. “We’re seeing a real uptick in demand for current customers looking for space in the market right now,” Duke Realty’s Stephanie Rodriguez said.
— Surfside tragedy: Lessons from the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Fla., show reforms are needed in how condo associations operate. Because of pressures to keep HOA fees low, condo boards can’t be trusted with the duty to raise adequate maintenance reserve funds to keep building safe, a panel of experts said.
— Palm trees in the air: As the conference was underway, construction continued next door on Miami’s newest residential high-rise, the 66-story Aston Martin Residences. The Real Deal’s Katherine Kallergis posted a photo on Twitter showing a crane hoisting a palm tree “to (what I’m assuming) is the top floor of the Aston Martin Residences in downtown Miami for the official topping out.”
— Investigative reporting tips: The ICIJ and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project have free online databases to help real estate reporters working on investigative stories. Sites include a vast archive of government records and an archive of leaked material. Among them: aleph.occrp.org, offshoreleaks.icij.org and id.occrp.org
— Finding award-winning stories: Boston Globe real estate writer Tim Logan shared a bit of wisdom about how to be a front-page, award-winning writer. Asked how he decides what stories to cover and which ones to ignore, he said relies on his editors to juggle what to do and what not to do. Said Logan: “You get the big stories by doing the small stories.”