In non-election, non-storm news here’s a piece on rising multifamily construction in downtown Indianapolis:
Milhaus’ ambitious $31 million project is one of a half-dozen apartment projects of at least 100 units being built Downtown or close by.
The new projects will dump some 1,000 apartment units onto the Downtown market by the end of 2014, including a new apartment building announced last week for Mass Ave. All told, they represent the biggest expansion ever for the Downtown market.
That may sound like a recipe for overbuilding, but Leazenby and two veteran apartment brokers say demand for rental living is strong enough to handle all the new product.
Even outside of expensive coastal areas this is a real estate type Americans need more of. Families with young kids at home are a shrinking part of the overall demographic pie, and folks who can’t qualify for a mortgage in the wake of the securitization bust still need places to live. I don’t dismiss the possibility that some entrepreneurs may crack the secret to operating single-family rental housing at an efficient scale but the proven model is multi-family structures. Ideally, national policy would actually catch up and support this trend rather than remaining obsessed with subsidizing homebuying, but in many ways the attitudes of local governments is what’ll matter most.
