Dive Brief:
- Apartment sales volume fell 25% year over year to $8 billion in 2025, declining across every subtype, according to a report that data firm MSCI Real Assets shared with Multifamily Dive.
- The Real Capital Analytics commercial property price indexes for multifamily dropped 0.1% YOY, according to MSCI.
- In January, mid- and high-rise trades fell 39% YOY to $2.7 billion. That was more than double the decline seen in garden property transactions, which dropped 15% YOY to $5.3 billion. Apartment entity-level deals plummeted a 64% YOY to $0.6 billion, while individual asset sales decreased 18% to $7.4 billion, according to MSCI.
Dive Insight:
Coming into the year, multifamily professionals were optimistic that transaction volume would increase following a disappointing couple of years.
“At some point, the market is going to shake loose,” Matt Ruesch, co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based investment firm Broad Creek Capital, told Multifamily Dive last year. “I think a lot of people were expecting that to happen in 2025, but there’s been a lot of volatility in the market too.”
Prices have risen steadily over the last few months, suggesting that the sales decline in January is not due to a sudden lack of investor confidence. “Momentum for price growth is healthy, however, with monthly rates improving over each of the last nine months,” according to MSCI.
While the dollar volume of deals finalized fell in the first month of 2026, February brought news that closings could increase later in the year. Last week, Veris Residential announced that it was being acquired by an investor consortium led by Affinius Capital in partnership with Vista Hill Partners in a $3.4 billion all-cash transaction.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to shareholder approval at Veris and other customary closing conditions. If that happens, April, May or June will see a sales boost.
Other institutional buyers may also become more active this year. In its recent report, MSCI noted that those investors accounted for 25% of purchases but only 19% of dispositions last year. In previous years, apartment observers had noted that those firms had been wary of making large deals.
“There was growth in apartment sales for all of 2025, but the cast of players active in the market was changing, with institutional capital regaining prominence,” MSCI wrote.
MSCI also noted that private investors were responsible for 65% of all acquisitions during 2025. However, they were responsible for 67% of sales, technically reducing their exposure.
Over the past few years, with institutions largely out of the market, private investors have had the opportunity to acquire assets. That could be coming to an end soon.
“Our real leading indicator is how active are institutional equity sources — the insurance companies, the opportunity funds, the endowments, pension funds,” Dan Byrnes, CEO of Security Properties, told Multifamily Dive last fall. “How strong is their appetite for multifamily product? And it has not been stronger at any point in the last several years.”
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