Six Takeaways from the NMHC Annual Meeting

The National Multifamily Housing Council’s Annual Meeting and Apartment Strategies Conference occurred at the end of January. Here’s a few takeaways from that event.

Takeaway #1: Recognizing Sun Belt Market Performance (and Recovery Timelines) Will Differ

For better or worse, the Sun Belt has been maligned in conversation the past few years. There’s certainly substance behind the bitterness, considering that the “Smile States” have seen performance dramatically invert from national pacesetter to national laggard of late. Further, the prolonged protraction has soured the outlook at the past few NMHC Annual/Strategies Conferences.

Yet, 2026 brought with it a slightly different tone. While essentially no one expects the Sun Belt to suddenly bounce back to the top of the national leaderboard, there’s a recognition that some markets will see faster (and some slower) recovery timelines. Those with quicker recovery timelines generally have a combination of a significant pullback in scheduled deliveries (e.g., Atlanta, with a 40%-plus decline in expected 2026 deliveries) and/or are further removed from their relative supply peak (e.g. Salt Lake City, now nine quarters removed from peak supply).

Takeaway #2: Eager Debt Meets a Less Eager (Though Still Hopeful) Buyer

Though everyone’s schedules were busy at NMHC Annual, there may not have been a busier set of schedules than those on the debt side of the industry. And make no mistake: there is a lot of debt out there. As time marches on, there’s a recalibration of expectations when it comes to debt, too. That’s true both on the side of debt funds (who are tempering expectations based on market conditions) and on the side of borrowers (who are becoming increasingly happy to see terms adjust).

Still, until seemingly strong fundamentals translate to realized revenue gains, buyers remain patient. And among the deals that are transacting, there’s a hyper-localization both in terms of physical location (proven, high-quality submarkets remain the focus) and type of asset (high quality, newer assets which are currently trending ahead of Class B and Class C counterpart properties).

Takeaway #3: 2026 Sentiment Varies Across Different Personas

Full author’s acknowledgment that this may be burying the lede, but arguably the most unique difference in the 2026 iteration of NMHC Annual/Strategies Conference was the difference in sentiment across different personas. Borrowing a summary from a peer who I felt did a great job of summarizing the difference in sentiment, this was a much more fragmented set of perspectives between operators (who were the most pessimistic on 2026’s outlook), owners (more optimistic than operators, but acknowledging that boosted performance outcomes will be a much-welcomed arrival), and developers (who are eager to get going right away, realizing that the massive decline in recent starts makes today’s environment perhaps paradoxically a great time to start new construction).

Takeaway #4: Distress Is Real (and More Will Come), but It’s Contained to Specific Assets

There was no shortage of discussions focused on distress. How much is out there? How much can be expected in the future? Is “extend and amend” really happening, or is it more of an “extend and pretend”?

For now, distress does appear to remain largely contained. That’s certainly not to dismiss the distress that’s out there as insignificant. But unlike past down cycles (those driven by a demand contraction), this supply-driven downcycle appears to be causing a more acute, localized set of property-level challenges.

Though risk of overgeneralization should be noted up front, the most common themes of distress appear to be supply-burdened markets that have failed to achieve organic rent growth), older assets (i.e., Class C assets, the lone asset class that has arguably been hit by both demand headwinds and supply-induced renter filtering), assets with less favorable rates (i.e., adjustable rates and/or assets that were bought with overzealous prices), and finally assets that require large capex improvements.

Takeaway #5: AI Takes Center Stage, but Sound Data (& Data Infrastructure) Further Entrenches

Understandably so considering the buzz generated by AI (in and outside of the multifamily housing industry), there was a lot of discussion focused on AI. And while that could warrant its own standalone write-up, the quick summary is that AI is quickly graduating from a “nice to have” novel tool into “an operational must-have” territory.

But hiding behind the boisterousness of AI was the whisper of data. In other words, quality of data and data inputs, data infrastructure, and data efficacy (or in other words, “how comfortable are we with the nuances of our data warehouse and can we explain the ins-and-outs to others?”) are critical pillars supporting the future growth trajectory of AI and AI implementation.

Takeaway #6: Rhyming Aphorisms May be Catchy … but Please Do Your Own Due Diligence!

Sure, it’s easy to latch on to quick, catchy rhymes that seemingly capture the market sentiment. Those at NMHC Annual 2024 will certainly remember the “Survive ‘til ‘25” mantra. That mantra eventually evolved into “It’ll Fix in ‘26” after an underwhelming 2025. And already there’s some focus on the “It’ll be Heaven in ‘27” axiom.

But at the end of the day, real estate remains a highly localized, highly nuanced, and highly fragmented (in terms of ownership and management share) industry, so this author’s advice is to focus instead on a non-industry centric axiom of “your