Dive Brief:
- Northern New Jersey claimed the top spot for apartment sales in the first half of 2026 with a record-high $4.3 billion in volume, according to a report that data firm MSCI Real Assets shared with Multifamily Dive.
- Affinius Capital and Vista Hill Partners’ acquisition of Veris Residential accounted for 70% of sales volume in Northern New Jersey. Based on single-asset volume alone, the market wouldn’t have made MSCI’s top 10. But with the REIT privatization included, it set a record for first-half sales.
- Dallas ($3.4 billion), Chicago ($3.2 billion), Los Angeles ($2.9 billion) and Manhattan ($2.8 billion) rounded out the five most active sales markets in the first half of 2026. Chicago and Manhattan each rose three spots from their full-year 2025 rankings, powered by year-over-year single-asset sales surging 68% and 81%, respectively.
Dive Insight:
Despite a sluggish national sales market, Northern New Jersey wasn’t the only area that set a first-half sales record.
San Francisco and San Jose, which have seen strong rental performance amid the artificial intelligence boom, posted all-time highs of $2.1 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively. Chicago and Detroit, the latter with $808 million in sales, have all seen robust property performance this year and tallied January-through-June highs.
Westchester County in New York also hit a first-half record with $749 million in trades, according to MSCI. Nearly one-third of that volume came from Kennedy Wilson, Kenedix and Hulic Co.’s acquisition of Carraway, a 421-unit property in West Harrison, New York, for $237 million, according to a press release. It was the second-largest single-asset apartment transaction of the first half of the year, according to MSCI.
Westchester wasn’t an outlier, with MSCI noting that “the most significant upward moves were concentrated in smaller markets,” where single-asset sales drove activity.
Despite posting the nation’s highest YOY rent growth in the country in July, half of San Francisco’s sales were distressed, according to MSCI. Hamilton Zanze and Fortress bought multi-property San Francisco deals, as portfolio deals accounted for 62% of market volume.
San Francisco was one of the first areas to see major pockets of distress in 2023. As those properties have worked their way through the system, sales have risen. That hasn’t been the case in other places.
“If you go back to 18 months, 24 months ago, I think there was a lot of equity capital that was ready to pounce on opportunities, and it hasn't materialized with the wave of distress that everyone was building up for,” Brian Share, vice chair, capital markets equity, debt and structured finance at Cushman & Wakefield, told Multifamily Dive.
Some 2026 top markets saw sales declines in the first half of the year, with Seattle having the biggest volume decrease at 51% to $1.1 billion. It fell from No. 4 for full-year 2025 to No. 16 in the first half of 2026, as its single-asset sales declined.
However, Seattle recorded some notable multi-asset sales last year, boosting its 2025 volume.
In September 2025, Virtú Investments emerged from a competitive bidding process to acquire two properties in Seattle, Erik Reif, the firm’s senior director of acquisitions, told Multifamily Dive at the time.
Security Properties added 903 apartments to its portfolio through the purchase of five properties from Washington Holdings for $400.8 million. At the time, Dan Byrnes, CEO of Security Properties, told Multifamily Dive the company would continue looking for deals in its hometown.
“We’ve been able to monitor operational performance trends in real time, and that visibility reinforces our thesis that select Seattle submarkets are experiencing tangible return [to] office demand, while new construction activity remains near multiyear lows,” Byrnes said.
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