Dive Brief:

• Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar (a $39.7 billion portfolio), Chicago-based REIT Equity Residential ($36 billion), Atlanta-based GID ($24.7 billion), Chicago-based Nuveen ($23.8 billion) and New York-based CBRE Investment Management ($24.2 billion) have the most valuable apartment portfolios, according to the Multi-Housing News’ (MHN) list of top multifamily property owners.
• Denver-based REIT UDR ($22.1 billion), King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based Morgan Properties (undisclosed), Houston-based REIT Camden Property Trust ($18.5 billion), Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based Edward Rose Building Enterprise (undisclosed) and New York-based The Related Cos. (undisclosed) rounded out the top 10.
• In all, the 50 members of the MHN top owners list control 1.3 million units, which have an estimated value of $385 billion. Occupancies were strong, with 18 companies above the national average of 96% and 29 at 95% or above. On average, portfolios on the list consisted of 31,600 units with a value of $8.3 billion.

Dive Insight:

Unlike the National Multifamily Housing Council Top 50, which ranks companies by the number of units they own, the MHN list considers a variety of factors, including units owned, portfolio value, historical performance and a focused or diversified participation in property sectors. 

Starwood Capital Group claimed the top spot on the 2022 NMHC Top 50 owners list, after gaining more than 25,000 units last year. MAA, the Memphis-based REIT, came in No. 2 for the first time since 2017, followed by Morgan Properties, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. MAA lost 488 units, while Morgan added just 3,490. 

Arlington, Virginia-based REIT AvalonBay Communities came in No. 4 and Greystar Real Estate Partners, No. 1 on the MHN list and the top manager and developer in the country, came in at No. 5 on the NMHC list.

NMHC locks in the final numbers for their list at the end of the calendar year, which is less than two months away. Although 2022 has been a healthy year for transactions, interest rate increases and market volatility cooled the trading market as the year went on. That slowdown may mean that there is less movement in the 2023 list.

However, there have been some major trades during the year, including a number of massive deals from private REITs, including Blackstone. The New York-based investment giant hasn’t appeared on the NMHC Top 50 but completed a number of major purchases in 2022, including the privatization of Austin, Texas-based student housing operator American Campus Communities.

Kathleen McCarthy, global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, said during the opening session of the Urban Land Institute’s annual fall meeting in Dallas that real estate is in a better place than it has been during other economic downturns, because the industry never returned to “those heady levels of new construction or lending that drove a lot of speculative construction” before the Great Recession.

“So, we’re entering this tougher economic moment with capital and with cranes,” McCarthy said. “Blackstone is more in check than it had been in prior cycles, and that, I think, positions our hard assets, our real estate assets, to do quite well.”

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