As stocks and home prices crater, apartment market remains strong

I'd imagine that some apartment investors with long-term bets on the rental market are feeling somewhat vindicated by the news that, at least according to data tracker RealFacts (an alliance partner to MetroIntelligence and Beacon Economics), rents and occupancy levels continued to hold up during the third quarter of 2008. From an AP story via the L.A. Times:

Apartment rents, as well as apartment occupancy, across the country were virtually unchanged in the third quarter of 2008, according to RealFacts, a San Francisco-based apartment data research firm.

And while more than a million homes have been lost to foreclosure in the last two years and with banks readying for another 1.5 million repossessions, apartment buildings have remained solvent. To date, there have been virtually no foreclosures on large apartment buildings, according to RealFacts...

In the San Francisco Bay area, with one of the highest housing prices in the country, average rents for the third quarter were $1,637, or 1.2 percent higher than the $1,618 they cost per month in the second quarter.

In the Riverside-San Bernardino area of southern California, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, rents were $1,157 in the third quarter, slightly down from $1,162 in the second.

And in the Las Vegas area, also hit hard by foreclosures, rents were $887 in the third quarter and $886 in the second...

The data collected by RealFacts comes from more than 3 million apartments in complexes of 100 units or greater.

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