Our Biggest Takeaways From NARPM National in Atlanta

The 2023 NARPM Annual Convention in Atlanta was chock full of collaboration and connection, the buzz was all about team culture and property management company acquisitions.

The RentScale coaching team attended the NARPM Annual Convention and Trade Show in Atlanta in October 2023. The team came home with some surprising headlines about where the industry is headed. Here are the key takeaways that Strategic PM talked about on This Week in PM.

General Market Updates

The entire real estate market has shifted over the last few years. We’ve thrown out the standard playbook on who will rent, who will buy, and how much they’ll pay. Standards are changing in priorities and behaviors.

Mortgage rates reached a 23-year high recently. The qualifying yearly income for a 30-year fixed mortgage was around $50,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now it’s well over $100,000, even close to $115,000 according to Redfin.

For over a century, the American dream has been to own a home. But now, we are looking more like a renter nation. The mortgage rate is at 8%, so mortgage payments on their own are amounting to about 38% of median income, not to mention all the other home ownership costs.

Millennials are also reaching the peak age for forming households. Most have spent years living in large multi-family complexes or even at their family homes. As they start to build families themselves, the demand for single-family homes is going to be insatiably high. Meanwhile, the transactional real estate market has come to a standstill because of high mortgage rates and the fact that homeowners aren’t selling.

This means more accidental landlords will be calling property management companies to see what their options are as they try to retain their 3% mortgages from years past. They don’t feel like they can sell. They may be getting recommendations to take on longer leases, like 24 months, to make sure they’re not back on the market at a bad time to sell or re-rent.

These trends are key for property managers (PMs) to pay attention to and embrace in conversations with clients.

What else did the team take away from NARPM this year?