📉 The Multifamily Construction Boom is Over — and That's Bullish for the Future. 2024 marked the tail end of a historic multifamily construction boom. New deliveries are hitting the market now, causing headlines about rent softening and oversupply in some metros. But here's what the headlines aren’t telling you: ➡️ New multifamily permits are down 27.1% from pandemic highs 🔗 GlobeSt, May 2025 https://www.globest.com/2025/05/06/multifamily-housing-permits-fall-to-lowest-levels-since-pandemic-in-most-us-cities/ ➡️ Completions have far outpaced new starts — by over 250,000 units in 2024 🔗 Jay Parsons, Feb 2025 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jay-parsons-a7a6656_the-final-numbers-are-in-and-in-2024-multifamily-activity-7287454668761309184-wcGC/ ➡️ Most major U.S. metros are seeing construction pullbacks 🔗 Commercial Real Estate Daily, May 2025 https://www.credaily.com/briefs/multifamily-permits-drop-as-construction-slows-nationwide/ ➡️ State housing agencies are warning of a supply gap by 2026 🔗 Stateline, May 2025 https://stateline.org/2025/05/01/the-number-of-new-apartments-is-at-a-50-year-high-but-states-expect-a-slowdown/ ➡️ Even Redfin shows permits are now below pre-pandemic levels 🔗 Redfin, May 2025 https://www.redfin.com/news/multifamily-construction-permits-2025/ 🔁 What does this mean? While current supply may feel abundant, the pipeline is drying up fast. And because it takes 2–3 years to entitle and build, we’re heading toward a structural shortfall.

One mistake I’ve made — and still catch myself making — is treating interviews like I’m the only one making the decision. I’m asking all the right questions: ✔️ What’s your background? ✔️ What’s your experience? ✔️ Are you qualified for the role? ✔️ Does the comp match? But I forget to ask: ❌ What’s important to you? ❌ What kind of career are you trying to build? ❌ What does your ideal company look like? That simple shift changes everything. If you don’t ask those questions up front, you risk hiring someone who doesn’t align long-term — not because they weren’t qualified, but because they had a different vision of what “winning” looked like. Give them space to interview you, too. Let them tell you what they value most — career growth, part-time stability, autonomy, mentorship, whatever. Then be honest: Can your company give them that? Long-term fit > short-term pain relief. Curious — how many of you ask this kind of stuff in your interviews? Or has anyone learned this lesson the hard way like I did?

Has anyone ever had a property owner ask if they could also serve as the property manager? Curious how others have handled this. Any creative ways to leverage this arrangement to improve cash flow or reduce overhead

Most people think real estate investing is just about buying buildings. But the real work—and the real upside—is in the operations. Every time a resident looks at one of your units, they’re walking through a sales process.From the listing… to the showing… to the move-in… to how they submit maintenance requests…It’s all part of the resident experience—and every step needs to be dialed in. This is where great operators stand out.Analyze each step. Improve each milestone. Build a machine. Sharpline Equity isn’t just investing—we’re engineering the experience.

This was the most difficult project in our career, and I’m proud of this story of perseverance and ultimately preservation of capital. In a time where there is much negativity towards Syndications and multifamily, this story hopefully gives hope to the operators out there doing the right thing, giving every bit of smarts and execution to protect capital. This story is a save. I don’t know many other operators that would have been able to pull off what we did and the challenges we faced, how we survived and thrived. Our strength as GP guarantors at Sharpline, our track-record, our relationships with Freddie and Fannie were the key. It’s a testament to Sharpline and the commitment of our team as well as the patience and belief from our investors. I want this post to be a reality check and not considered bragadocious but give homage to the people in Sharpline and the many partners (lenders, vendors, consultants, investors) that helped get this insurmountable project to where it is today. Here we go. 3 years ago we bought this as a heavy value-add post covid. We couldn’t get new roofs that were leaking for 7 months, so this inhibited our reposition to improve the property, which kept some of the bad elements at the community there longer than we wanted. Fire property management company 1 , Fire property management company 2 (proverbial jump out frying pan into the fire, scary). Decided to self-manage project. This was in an early stage of our self-management journey about 2 years ago (we now self-manage 1500+ units). We purchase one half of the project with cash and the other with a bridge loan with floating rate debt (our only floating rate Sharpline has ever done, we didn’t buy a rate cap either, not smart) 4% bridge loan. We begin to execute capex plan successfully (we ripped the mansards off #MansardSlayer). The process of reposition took longer than we liked because of construction delays and bad PM companies, but we ultimately had the safety net of the 24 unit townhouse project that was getting higher occupancy that we purchased with cash as part of the syndication. So we refi’d the 24 unit with a local bank and GPs personally guaranteed the loan as we continued to do projects. This allowed us to free up liquid capital to continue executing to get higher occupancy, but we were still not there yet. We were at 65% overall occupancy on 128 units and the community was improving.