By Joshua Burd
Gebroe-Hammer Associates completed more than $300 million in first-quarter apartment sales in the region, the firm announced, while expressing optimism about the multifamily sector’s long-term health after it weathers the coronavirus pandemic.
The Livingston-based brokerage said it closed 18 transactions spanning 1,574 units during Q1. The firm completed the sales, which had a value of $316.4 million, on behalf of private owners, family offices, private equity funds and institutional investors with local, regional, national and global interests.
Company President Ken Uranowitz said the quarter marked a carry-over “of the same historic multifamily investment confidence that fueled one of the longest and most aggressive apartment-property investment cycles in history.” He added that, while it’s premature to forecast how and when the economy and the multifamily sector will adjust, the “fundamental function of apartments has always ensured — and will continue to do so — their longevity and status as the most reliable living option and most resilient commercial real estate asset type.”
“Now, as a society and as an industry, we find ourselves in unchartered waters due to the sudden and abrupt measures imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19,” said Uranowitz, who joined Gebroe-Hammer at its inception in 1975. “While there are challenges that can only be fully addressed with the passage of time, health and well-being remain paramount. In this regard, multifamily properties play an integral role in providing tenants and communities with the most basic needs of shelter, a place to live and a place from which to telecommute for work or education.”
Gebroe-Hammer said its transactions in Q1 ran the gamut, including a newly built Class A apartment building in Woodbridge, with a price per unit of $280,000. The firm also recorded three undisclosed single-property sales in northern, central and southern New Jersey collectively encompassing 485 units, for a combined $127 million.
Drawing on his own decades of experience, Uranowitz said the New York and Philadelphia metros as a whole have historically trended with more stability as compared to their major metro counterparts nationwide.
“Occupancy rates and asking/effective rents may waver, but they will eventually bounce back just as they did in the aftermath of the height of the Great Recession in early 2009 and every other downturn before that,” he said.
“These economic shockwaves will ease and multifamily properties and the people who own, manage, invest and live in them will emerge even stronger,” he added. “This coronavirus may be novel, but the enduring strength of apartment properties is long established.”