My podcast guest this week is Chris Garner, CEO, Avanti Residential, an owner-operator with thousands of units across seven states, who has four decades in the trenches.
Garner explains how the multifamily market is bottoming – with local nuance. The past two years weren't a demand recession, he says, so much as a supply shock in growth metros. Concessions did the absorbing. Now we're approaching the peak of deliveries in places like Nashville, Denver, and Phoenix but investment committees are still anchored to five-year IRR math and negative-leverage scar tissue.
His take on timing is blunt – "We're at the bottom of the multifamily cycle, if not the beginning of the recovery," but the irony is that capital is still sidelined. Investment committees remain cautious, waiting for "clear evidence" that fundamentals have turned, even though the best returns are made before that clarity arrives.
As Garner put it, everyone talks about not following the herd, "but everybody's part of the herd." When deals finally reprice and capital moves, the easy money is gone. "That's when the best deals get missed because you couldn't raise capital when it was actually the right time to buy."
Five questions Chris and I discuss:
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Where are we in the cycle?
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What does an efficient operating model look like now?
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How should value-add evolve?
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What's the realistic path to transacting again?
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What hold period wins from here?
Tune in for the full conversation with Chris Garner, CEO, Avanti Residential - a masterclass in operating discipline, market selection, and underwriting in the real world.
