A new nontraded multifamily REIT was born this week as part of a $617M recapitalization of more than 60 properties, including an under-construction apartment tower in Manhattan. 

Grubb Properties’ 8 Carlisle St. multifamily project is expected to top out this month.

Charlotte-based Grubb Properties consolidated several legacy funds into Link Apartments REIT, a newly formed managed REIT with more than 5,600 apartments in its portfolio.

The rollup of high net worth funds and rebranding to create the single entity occurred as Grubb also secured a $240M credit facility for the new REIT and its Link Apartments Opportunity Zone REIT, which was formed a few years ago and isn’t part of the consolidation. 

Grubb also secured a $300M senior construction loan from Maxim Capital Group and a $77M mezzanine loan co-originated by GreenBarn Investment Group, Skylight Real Estate Partners, Axonic Capital and Meadow Partners that fully capitalizes its Manhattan multifamily project called 8 Carlisle. 

“The REIT was created partially to have a vehicle with a bigger balance sheet that’s going to allow us to get bigger financing. But at the same time, it was also a move towards simplicity and efficiency,” Emily Ethridge, a spokesperson for Grubb, said in an interview Tuesday morning. 

Grubb values the new 45-property REIT at roughly $1.9B. It includes 8 Carlisle, a 64-story tower with 462 apartments that is set to top off construction this month, Ethridge said. The OZ REIT, which was also created through the merger of several funds a few years ago, has a 17-property portfolio, and fewer than 10 of Grubb’s other assets are still individually owned outside either entity, Ethridge said. 

The fund isn’t open for new investment, and there are no plans to pursue a public listing, she said. 

Grubb collectively secured the $617M in financing across the portfolio recapitalization with help from several teams at JLL, according to a release from the global brokerage. 

“By coordinating our M&A, Corporate Banking and Debt & Equity advisory expertise, JLL was able to sequence the series of transactions appropriately to ensure a seamless structure,” JLL Managing Director Stephen Van Leer said in a statement. 

Grubb’s refinancing move comes as the multifamily sector broadly emerges from a supply-driven malaise, with second-quarter apartment absorption hitting 124,600 units, among the highest in 25 years, and helping to push vacancy lower. 

A slowdown in new housing construction adds another tailwind to the back of multifamily developers. But the sector is also facing a demographic challenge, with the pace of U.S. population growth rapidly declining as President Donald Trump cracks down on illegal immigration. 

UPDATE, JULY 22, 10:23 A.M. ET: This story has been updated to clarify what assets are covered under the new $240M credit facility. 

Blue Ridge sold the Reserve at Jacksonville Commons apartment complex in Jacksonville for $54 million. The buyer was Southwood Realty.

The Reserve at Jacksonville Commons, which has 384 units, was built in the early 2000s and features one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Monthly rents range from $1,215 to $1,595, with sizes from 840 to 1,340 square feet.

Amenities include a pool with a grilling station, an outdoor fire pit, a gourmet coffee bar and fitness centers with free weights and cardio machines. Outdoor amenities include a playground, lighted tennis courts, and two leash-free dog parks for your furry friends.

Blue Ridge has developed more than $2 billion of projects, including 11,500 apartment units. 

Southwood owns more than 100 properties across Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Southwood’s North Carolina properties are in Asheville, Burlington and Concord, among other places.

The multifamily construction pipeline has taken a nosedive to numbers that haven’t been seen in a decade and a half, according to Apartments.com and CoStar. 

Roughly 55,000 units broke ground across the U.S. during the first quarter, the lowest quarterly volume since 2011, as higher development and financing costs and a slowdown in rent growth have limited new construction. 

Only about 579,000 units were underway at the end of the quarter, a 50% decline from the 2023 peak and also back to levels last seen in the mid-2010s.

The free fall in starts comes despite a record wave of office-to-residential conversions sparked by a looming wall of $213B in office loans maturing this year. There are 90,300 units underway via these types of conversions, a 28% increase over a record 2024.

Cities with the most apartment units under construction as of Q1 are New York City, with 43,000 units on the way, followed by 31,000 in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is line with the previous quarter. The cities with the highest development totals compared to the size of their markets, however, are Miami, Charlotte and Tampa, showing Sun Belt development is still alive and well despite years of oversupply.

Southern and Mountain states have the highest amount of new construction in relation to total inventory, with each region’s pipeline topping 3% of supply. They are followed by the Northeast’s 2.7% and the Midwest’s 2.4%. In the Pacific, less than 2% of total supply consists of new builds. 

Many metros are still working through oversupply from the last build cycle. There were 585,200 units delivered in 2024, a multidecade high. Residents are plentiful, though. Up to 300,000 apartments are expected to be absorbed this year.

Multifamily landlords might finally get a chance to breathe with deliveries slowing and lease renewals growing, as many residents are still priced out of buying a home.

Executives at MAA, AvalonBay and Camden Property Trust cited rent-to-income ratios improving on full-year earnings calls for 2025. That is the silver lining in what is expected to be a costly year for multifamily REITs, many of which kicked off 2026 by signaling lower net operating incomes in the year ahead.

That is on top of declines last year. MAA reported NOI fell 1.4% in 2025, and Equity Residential’s fell 0.9%. AvalonBay saw 1.9% growth, but it was below the 2.4% expectation. 

Executives cited a worsening job market and increased economic uncertainty as a drag on profit this year.

Knighthead Funding in partnership with Speedwagon Capital Partners arranged a $27 million refinancing for Signature Music Row – a newly constructed 105-unit Class A multifamily property located at 1005 16th Avenue South in Nashville, Tennessee.

Preiss utilized the loan to refinance its construction loan. Preiss is a privately held student housing owner, developer, and operator. Located in Nashville’s Music Row neighborhood, the apartment complex is near Vanderbilt University, which is within walking distance.

Situated on a 0.64-acre site, the six-story midrise property features a mix of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartment homes, as well as townhomes. Residences have private patios or balconies.

Amenities include an elevated outdoor pool, an outdoor grilling area, a resident clubroom, a sixth-floor sky lounge, and a fitness center. The property also includes a ground-level retail space occupied by Silver Fox Coffee Lounge.

Beachwold Residential inked a $50.5 million first mortgage loan to refinance a 308-unit garden-style apartment community in Jacksonville, FL. The financing was led by Mesa West Capital’s Russell Frahm and Brad McCarthy. The loan was arranged by Taylor Williams of Walker and Dunlop. 

The five-year, non-recourse loan is secured by Gran Bay Apartments, a 308-unit, 2015-vintage garden-style community comprising 14 buildings on 15.5 acres. The property offers a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom units featuring stainless steel appliances, walk-in closets, private balconies, and in-unit washers and dryers. Amenities include a swimming pool, fitness center, business center, grilling areas, fire pits, dog park, and children’s play area. 

Gran Bay Apartments is located at 13444 Gran Bay Parkway in Duval County’s Southside submarket, providing immediate access to Interstate 95 and proximity to Flagler Center, a major employment corridor anchored by Baptist Medical Center and Citigroup’s regional operations campus.

Private equity investment is gobbling up an increasing share of apartment units, now accounting for at least a tenth of all ownership in the United States, with most of it concentrated in the Sun Belt region.

Multifamily Apartment Building

Private equity firms own about 8,200 apartment buildings comprised of over 2.2 million units, according to a Private Equity Stakeholder Project report. Of the 121 big private equity firms PESP tracked, the 10 largest apartment owners collectively share 41% of them, a total of 900,000 units across the country.

Blackstone is the largest private equity owner of apartments in the U.S. with over 230,000 units. Greystar follows with 138,000 units. Other major firms owning vast swaths of units include Starwood Capital, Related Cos., Cortland and Brookfield.

Sixty-two percent of these units, or 1.4 million, were purchased since 2018, and almost 930,000 since 2021.

Blackstone picked up 58% of its units in or after 2021, and more than 75% were acquired since 2018. Starwood bought 53% of its portfolio in or after 2021 and 77% since 2018.

More than half of all units are located in five states: Texas, Florida, California, Georgia and North Carolina. Texas has the largest share of private equity-owned units at over 440,000 units across 1,500 properties.

Four of the top five — Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — also saw the largest population growth from 2020 to 2024.

The top 10 metropolitan areas with the largest private equity investment are Dallas; Atlanta; Houston; Denver; Austin; Phoenix; Orlando, Florida; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; and Tampa, Florida.

Those metros are home to 860,000 units owned by private equity, with Dallas seeing the largest share at 191,431 units and 598 properties, followed by Atlanta, where private equity owns 141,500 units and 466 properties.

The report also tracked the cost-burden impact of the private equity sector on these markets.

The Tampa, Florida, metro, where 23.4% of apartments are owned by private equity, saw a 20.8% increase in households spending 30% or more of their income on housing between 2019 and 2023. The percentage of households exceeding that spending figure rose from 53% to 64% over those four years.

Renters are increasingly choosing to stay put rather than venture into the unknown, where elevated home prices and broader economic volatility await.

Apartments are staying full longer as high mortgage rates and limited inventory keep renters in place.

Historically, about half of apartment renters choose not to renew their leases. In the first quarter of 2025, that number has dropped to between 30% and 35% in the portfolios of major multifamily landlords, according to Piper Sandler Managing Director of Research Alex Goldfarb.

Large multifamily REITs have reported some of the lowest turnover rates in their companies’ history in recent calls with analysts, like Equity Residential, which reported a 7.9% turnover rate in the first quarter. 

“We’ve seen price growth still put a lot of burden financially on families and individuals across the country,” National Apartment Association Vice President of Research George Ratiu said. “With volatility and uncertainty, I think a lot of folks renting might choose to take what I would say is the certainty of rent over making a long-term commitment.”

Major REITs like Camden Property Trust reported a 31% annualized net turnover rate in Q1, one of the lowest in its history. Essex Property Trust said its turnover landed at 35%, below the company’s long-term average.

Marcie Williams, chief strategy officer of The Bainbridge Cos., which develops, acquires and manages multifamily properties nationwide, is seeing roughly two-thirds of tenants stay put at many of its communities.

“That [retention rate] is extremely high,” Williams said. “I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and that is definitely not typical overall.”

Since President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement at the beginning April, price expectations and trade policies have seesawed, prompting fears of a trade war and heightening economic uncertainty. 

Consumer confidence plunged to a 13-year low in April, prompting many commercial real estate professionals to prepare for a recession. But that hasn’t impacted apartment owners, and some see them as a clear winner in an environment with costs spiking. 

“There are a few stories of residents expressing concern due to job loss, but nothing at the moment that is impacting any of our stats, results or projections for the next 90 days in the market,” Equity Residential Chief Operating Officer Michael Manelis said on his company’s first-quarter earnings call. 

Manelis said even in D.C. and Northern Virginia, where federal government job losses are having an outsized economic impact, Equity’s complexes are more than 97% occupied.

But multifamily turnover has been shrinking for the past two years, driven by rising home prices, high interest rates and a shift in renter preferences toward more livable and amenity-rich spaces — a change that began during the pandemic, Goldfarb said.

Less than a third of renters are looking to buy a home within the next five years, according to a survey conducted by Gallup. The cost of homeownership, including the down payment, was cited as the biggest barrier for renters trying to break into the housing market.

“It’s really just the uncertainty with the economy and still the high barriers to entry, with higher interest rates and higher down payments, that has allowed our residents to be able to enjoy the service that we provide and the apartment home that they currently live in,” Williams said.

For landlords, that stability is a win. Lower turnover reduces operating and maintenance costs — typically ranging from $750 to $1,800 per unit — as well as marketing expenses and vacancy loss, since each unoccupied day results in lost revenue, she said.

“There really is nothing negative that comes from having lower turnover,” Williams said.

The bulk of move-outs and lease expirations occur in the spring and summer, Ratiu said, so lower turnover rates at the beginning or end of the year are more common. But turnover is expected to stay low during peak move-out season, even with new units continuing to come to the market, Goldfarb said.

After eight consecutive quarters of record apartment deliveries, completions have fallen from 153,000 units at the end of 2024 to 116,100 units in the first quarter, according to RealPage.

“This year is the second and final year of this outsized supply wave that we’ve seen, primarily in the Sun Belt,” Goldfarb said. “But last year, we had a big supply [increase], and yet turnover declined. So I don’t see any reason why turnover should increase as the second wave of supply delivers.”

With fewer move-outs, owners of the new apartments that have come online are fighting to get in on the action and competing more aggressively for tenants.

That is driving up concessions on new leases, sometimes as high as two months of free rent and $1K gift cards, especially in Sun Belt cities like Jacksonville and Charlotte, Williams said.

“When those properties are 0% occupied, competing with an apartment community that’s 95% occupied, they have to have those concessions to keep up the velocity and the velocity you know you want to make,” Williams said.

But deliveries are expected to fall 14% in 2025, according to Multi-Housing News, tipping the balance of power back toward landlords. With fewer new options coming online and renters growing hesitant to move out, prices are expected to start rising.

“The landlord goes, OK, how much do we think we can raise rent before we raise too much that the person just says, ‘The heck with it, I’m out?’” Goldfarb said. “And I think most people would agree that the mental cost of moving exceeds the actual dollar amount.”

Sagard Real Estate acquired Grande Oaks, a 270-unit garden-style apartment community located in Roswell, Georgia. Starwood Capital Group was the seller. Commercial Edge reports Starwood initially purchased the community in 2021 for $77.7 million. Sagard plans to execute a value-add renovation program, including upgrading 121 classic units, installing in-unit laundry, enhancing common areas, and refreshing amenities.

Built in 1996, Grande Oaks spans over 311,000 rentable square feet across 11 residential buildings on a 19-acre site. The community features a well-rounded amenity package, including a clubhouse, fitness center, swimming pool, outdoor fireplace, grill and picnic area, children’s playground, car wash, and pet-friendly facilities such as a dog park and pet wash station.

The investment was made in partnership with McCann Realty Partners and Pegasus Residential. This is the second property managed by Pegasus Residential on behalf of Sagard Real Estate.

Historic West End Partners has amassed several parcels on West Trade Street, allowing the company to pursue a mixed-use development that’s expected to be anchored by a grocery store.

Historic West End Partners will collaborate with Chotomy, the development arm of local architecture firm Shook Kelley; The Integral Group; and Charlotte nonprofit P3 Foundation on a six-story, 290-unit apartment building that will include a 15,000-square-foot market as the ground-floor anchor tenant. The five-parcel assemblage will total just over 1.5 acres and cost $100 million to build. Funding will come from donations and privately placed tax exempt bonds.

The Charlotte Business Journal reports the affordable housing development will be unlike any other project the city has seen because it will be wholly owned by a group of nonprofits. As co-developers, Integral and Chotomy will only be compensated on a fee basis with no ownership in the project.

The groups hope to break ground in 2026 and deliver in late 2027.