Mortgage & Commercial Lending News.

In our previous entry, we presented some trends and forces affecting commercial real estate, specifically those related to office properties, retail properties, and industrial properties. This article discusses the trends and market forces affecting Multifamily properties. 

Mr. Marvy Finger, an 86-year-old Houston based real estate investor, was featured this month in Forbes magazine[1] in a fascinating article about the future of rental properties.
Turns out that Marvy Finger recently sold 2 billion dollars worth of rental properties to real estate investor Greystar. Yes, you read it right: 2 billion dollars (worth exactly two thousand million dollars, and that's just half of what Marvy Finger owned before the trade). The article's central theme is that Marvy Finger thinks rents must come down, in short to midterm, from what he thinks are unsustainable levels. In contrast, Gresytar believes that rents will keep increasing, and it's a good time to invest in rental properties.

Most of us like surprises, when and if they are pleasant surprises. However, the past few weeks surprised the world in a very unpleasant way. The appalling reappearance of war in Eastern Europe. When we look back to the end of last year, we wish world leaders and diplomats had been more determined or forceful to find a solution that would have helped prevent this absurd war. We would have expected things to be different in Eastern Europe and continued to enjoy peace, however fragile. Our deepest desire today is to end the war in Ukraine and return to peace. After witnessing the ravages of war all over our media channels, our hearts go out to all those currently suffering in Ukraine.

It is never too late to get into real estate investing. Yet, as with many things in life, you must study and be diligent to be a successful real estate investor because, mind you, real estate investing is not as easy as some make it sound on TV: there are plenty of aspects that could go wrong when buying a property as an investment. In what follows, we give you some tips that might prove helpful to you whether you are a proven investor or are just considering getting into real estate investing.

Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the global economy and, closer to home, on the Commercial Real Estate industry. Companies that carry on business in commercial real estate premises have had to make many changes due to the lockdowns and instructions to stay at home. This has led to companies digitizing their operations, conducting operations online, ensuring the health and safety of employees, and protecting their employees' financial health. 

It would be nice to have a crystal ball here at AMI Lenders to predict the future, but sadly we don't. In any case, given that the hot housing market is very much in the news these days, we would like to help you decide whether the time is right for you to invest in the real estate market in the next 12 to 18 months (we are writing this blog in early September 2021). So, with all the caveats in place and all the legal disclaimers that we are not fortune tellers, the following are some informed predictions about what you might expect to see in the next year and a half in the residential property market. Spoiler: now is the time to invest in residential property.

Most think of "hard money lenders" as risk-takers, loan sharks, high-interest-rate lenders, lenders that require no documentation, and/or lenders who lend only to individuals with bad credit.

Ever since the coronavirus broke out, stay-at-home orders were imposed everywhere, with people only allowed to step out when it was necessary. The pandemic forced many people to work from home as they couldn't leave their homes to go to work because of the risk of falling sick.