Walker & Dunlop CEO Predicts Shift in Multifamily With Potential Rent Growth

The pain might be almost over for multifamily landlords in high-growth markets. Willy Walker, chairman and CEO of Walker & Dunlop, who will be a speaker at GlobeSt.'s multifamily panel on April 1 in New York City, believes that the general influx of supply that the asset class has been dealing with might have finally peaked.

"People are kind of looking across the board and sort of saying there's going to be such a lack of new supply coming into the markets in 2026 and 2027 and start to underwrite some rent growth," he told GlobeSt.

"I think that's a pretty significant shift in the market just over the past couple months."

In fact, a recent report from the National Association of Home Builders found that new starts fell by 25 percent last year and are expected to drop by another 11% in 2025.

As far as large portfolio transactions go, those types of deals were "devoid" in 2023 and 2024. While they haven't picked up yet, he said he had been hearing more chatter about bigger potential deals. Also, he noted that the new Trump administration has not had a major impact on the multifamily sector, at least just yet.

TRENDS LEANING IN REDDER STATES

As always for CRE, investors are going to be lured by the places that have the best demographic trends. For multifamily specifically it's all about job growth — and right now that's happening mostly in more predominantly red states like Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas, according to Walker.

Some of the best employment-growing regions he listed were Miami, Charlotte, North Carolina, Dallas, Houston, and Nashville.

"Investors are looking for job growth, and it's undeniable that the job growth is happening in those markets, whereas when you look at the cities that have barely gotten back to, in some cases not gotten back to their pre-pandemic employment levels, you're talking about the Baltimore's, Boston's, and San Francisco's this world," Walker said.

Even though many of the high growth regions in red states have been dealing with an influx of supply, he added that a lot of CRE firms are still making "long-term bets" in those areas.

W&D ACTIVE WITH INVESTMENTS

Despite uncertainties that lie ahead on tariffs, other policies from the new Trump Administration, and how they will affect the economy, W&D has recently been active with company-wide investments.

This includes expanding its affordable housing team with former Wells Fargo employees, opening up a London office, debuting a new investment sales team in Phoenix, and launching a hospitality investment sales division.

UPCOMING LOAN MATURITIES COULD LEAD TO MORE DEALS

While W&D is more focused on a long-term vision in the short-term, Walker is hopeful that CRE operators will find more appetite to make deals. Specifically, he pointed to maturities for loans getting steeper.

"There is an absolute massive amount of debt that is going to need to get refinanced over the next couple of years, he highlighted.

Trepp recently predicted that CMBS loan maturities would average about $150.9 billion in 2025, which could possibly lead to issuance growth.

Also, Walker thinks that investors could finally start to accept the new interest rate reality. The Federal Funds rate has remained in the four to five percent range in recent months, which could be as good as it gets today. The days of rates in the two percent to three percent range might be over.

But regardless, W&D believes it's in strong position long-term, and does not get too caught up on quarterly trends. Particularly, the multifamily space looks strong.

"Multifamily has been the fastest growing commercial real estate asset class for the last two decades," Walker said.

"It has all the growth drivers to continue to be the dominant commercial real estate asset class, and we're exceptionally well positioned."