release edition [087] read time [9 minutes] Welcome to The Multifamily Download, a weekly newsletter where I provide institutional insights to help you build an exceptional Multifamily career. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here. Today at a Glance:
MultiScreen Is LiveI'm excited to share that MultiScreen is now live. Click here to begin your 7-day free trial. Note: Founding Member pricing available until September 30th. What Is MultiScreen? In simple terms, MultiScreen helps Multifamily professionals (both Buyers and Brokers) underwrite more deals faster with detailed analytics and generate deal deliverables with one-click. Import a Rent Roll, T12, and/or OM and MultiScreen underwrites the deal in minutes: Institutional returns, a 0 to 100 MultiScore, and one-click deliverables including an IC memo, Seller BOV, and LOI. Every saved deal lands in your pipeline with every data source, underwriting assumption, and market comparable attached, so your 40th deal starts where your 39th finished. If you've trained Claude or ChatGPT on your model then you've probably solved data extraction. But what a chat thread can't do is remember every key assumption and every data source from every past deal. MultiScreen does. Underwrites that used to take hours now takes minutes, and every saved deal makes the next underwrite better. Purchased separately, the underwriting engine, the market data, the memo and BOV generators, and the pipeline management system total $16,800+ per year, and that's before hiring an analyst to tie it all together. Founding Members get Pro for $148 per month for 12 months. Once the Founding Member seats are claimed, the price will go up to $197 per month. Founding Member pricing closes September 30 and seats are limited since I am onboarding each Founding Member personally. I can only do that well for so many people. Founding Members also get complimentary white-glove pipeline migration: Send me your current deal tracker in any format and I'll prepare your tracker so it imports into your pipeline in one click. I know MultiScreen isn't for everyone reading this. But, if you are part of the underwriting process, as either a Buyer or Broker, I would encourage you to sign up for a free trial to try it out. No card or commitment required. Get started below and let me know what you think! Click here to begin your 7-day free trial. Rent GrowthThree weeks ago, in TMD 084, I wrote the following: "One of the themes I've been writing about in 2026 is this: I expected rent growth to be relatively weak in the first half of the year (mirroring the second half of 2025) and a recovery to begin in the second. I even went "on the record" as this was prediction #1 in TMD 052. More recently in TMD 076, I graded this prediction as "tracking" at the mid-year mark, and in TMD 079 I called the Q2 numbers the strongest evidence yet that a 2H 2026 recovery may still be on schedule. The data is starting to agree." More recently, the monthly Yardi Matrix national report was released, and it demonstrates that the positive rent growth momentum is continuing to build. Five of my top takeaways from the report are below. You can read the full report here. 1. Rent Growth Hits 12-Month High Summary The recovery I predicted back in January is showing up in the data, but it's still early. Rents are rising again at the fastest pace in a year, yet at just 0.4%, they're running ~300 bps under the 10-year norm, and the spread between strong and weak rent growth markets remains wide. The powerful force of supply continues to put downward pressure on rents, and the forecast shows that the heaviest-supply markets may still be a ways away from sustained positive rent growth. Actionable Takeaway At the risk of sounding like a broken record, pursue new acquisitions in markets with less than 3% of stock delivering today. Markets like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, or San Francisco all have structural advantages for near-term rent growth given their low supply. Studying domestic migration, household formation, and how fast a market is improving are all worth watching carefully. The Fed's DilemmaI do not envy the seat that Kevin Warsh sits in ahead of this week's FOMC decision. Recent economic data is noisy, conflicting, and messy, and everyone has an opinion about what Warsh and the Fed should or should not do in this week's FOMC meeting. Ahead of the meeting and FOMC interest rate decision, let's play a quick game of "what happens if" based on the possible outcomes. If The Fed Hikes Hawks will be happy, given that the Keynesian perspective considers demand as the inflation problem. However, all else equal, higher rates slow demand because higher rates, ironically, are inflationary (higher borrowing costs = upward pressure on prices), which puts upward pressure on prices in the short term. The typical consequence of this is that demand will soften, and then eventually inflation recedes simply due to demand destruction. This somewhat circular logic is the struggle that I have accepting the demand-side approach, because claiming that "raising rates = lower inflation" negates the impact on the consumer along the way. In my view, I would be surprised if the Fed hikes rates, but if they do, I would expect the entire yield curve to display some volatility. If the Fed Holds Hawks will be frustrated, but I will argue that cooler heads would have prevailed. The CPI print this past week was elevated, but much of that inflation reading was due to the (hopefully) transitory rise in oil prices. CPI less energy is came in at 2.47%, the lowest reading since March of 2021. If (of when) the oil shock passes, it would logically follow that inflation will continue to trend downward (the dotted line below). Per CNBC, "Energy propelled the headline number higher, as gasoline prices jumped 3.9%, accounting for more than one-third of the index’s gain. The energy index broadly rose 2.1% amid pressure from escalating tensions in the Middle East and was up 16.3% from a year ago. Gasoline rose 27.4% and fuel oil surged 52% on a 12-month basis. Food prices edged 0.1% higher as food at home costs held flat. The food index accelerated 2.7% annually." I know the market is all but pricing in an interest rate hike, with 87% expecting a quarter point increase according to CME Group, but I would view a hike decision as surprising. Raising rates will not increase global oil production, end the Iran war, or counteract seasonal Summer travel demand that is now in the rearview mirror. If The Fed Cuts Although highly unlikely, it's still one of the three possible outcomes, so let's think about it for a moment. If the Fed cuts, this would be a clear departure from the previous Fed's approach, and would signal that the restrictive handcuffs may finally be coming off of the economy. As I have written about in the past, even Jerome Powell admitted in March that short-end rates are currently restrictive. the hypothetical question worth considering: Although the U.S. economy appears to be doing well, how much better could it be doing if short-term rates were closer to 2.50% - 2.75%? I don't know if we'll get this answer anytime soon, but it's something that I think about often. What do you think the Fed does this week? Hike, hold, or cut? Hit reply and let me know what you think. Curious to hear your POV. Weekly ListenThis week's listen is Odd Lots (Bloomberg), hosted by Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, with guest Darrell Duffie of Stanford. The 30-year Treasury just touched 5% for the first time since 2008, and this early September episode digs into many of the reasons why: Bessent's expanded buyback program, Warsh's hawkish turn at Jackson Hole, and the harder question of what it actually takes to bring long rates back down. Duffie is extremely knowledgable about how the Treasury market works, and given everything I laid out about the yield curve above, his perspective is worth the listen. You can listen to the full episode here. Wrap UpThat's it for today. I hope you found this edition of The Multifamily Download insightful. Consider sharing this link to The Multifamily Download with a friend or colleague. Your feedback is appreciated, so feel free to reply anytime. Thanks for reading. See you next week! Forwarded this email? Sign up here. LinkedIn | X | Website | MultiScreen |
The Multifamily Download · September 13, 2026
Rent Growth, The Fed's Dilemma, & More
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