Market prices are up across the entire city. Where you could once buy stuff for 10x GRM, almost everything is now 12x+.
If you’re looking at deals now, it’s important not to get caught up in thinking about buildings relative to each other. At any time, I can tell you what the best thing to buy is in any of the neighborhoods I like. But just because something is a better deal than the other stuff out there doesn’t necessarily make it a good deal.
Now, there are still some genuinely good deals out there. For example, there are stabilized apartment plays at 11x where there is upside because the zoning allows for denser development in the future. And there are non-rent control buildings where the rent have room to move, allowing you to get closer to 10-11x by doing a little management work.
And, if you get one of these reasonable deals and you finance it with reasonable leverage for as long a fixed period as possible, you’re going to do very well.
But there is no magic that transforms a rent control building bought for 14x the rents into a good play. Unless you have (1) a plan to increase rents / reduce costs, and (2) the capital and experience to pull it off, you should probably not buy any rent control building at that multiple, because there is not going to be any real cashflow for years and you’re exposed to re-finance risk in the event rates continue to move (hint: they will).
On the other hand, you don’t necessarily have to pay attention to cashflow if you don’t want. You could just decide to bet on prices increasing. You can figure: I’ll buy at 13x now and hope some fool down the road is willing to buy at 15x two years from now.
But just understand that, if you’re doing that, you’re a speculator. And speculating right now hoping for multiples to increase, when we know interest rates are also increasing, seems like an extremely risky play to me.