🔮 The data shaping tomorrow's rent wars

👋 Hello, Best Ever readers!

In today’s newsletter, permit trends tell the future, rent programs get probed, CRE lauds AI, a self-storage shutdown, and much more.

Today’s edition is presented by M1 Real Capital. Built through $3B+ in transactions and trusted by 1,000+ operators, fund managers and capital allocators. M1 Real Capital installs the systems used to create predictable private capital. Book a Capital Constraints Call to diagnose exactly where your raise breaks and what needs to be fixed.

🌟 In the last 90 days alone, Inner Circle members have acquired hundreds of units, raised millions in capital, and helped each other solve real business challenges. See what's happening inside the community and how you can join us in Cincinnati this August. Learn more.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

💸 Rent Review: A Florida lawmaker has urged the CFPB to investigate "rent now, pay later" platforms, warning that installment fees reaching $50 per month may burden the 18 million renter households already spending over 30% of income on rent.

🏢 Trophy Tax: Miami has claimed the nation's highest office rents at $59.66 PSF, edging past New York, as finance and family-office tenants push Class A space in Brickell and Coconut Grove beyond $100 PSF.

🤖 AI Drag: Some 97% of institutional CRE firms have integrated AI into their investment process, yet only 51% say it actually saves time, with 41% reporting AI-assisted work takes longer than manual once outputs are double-checked.

🏭 Big Boxes: Industrial leasing has surged 27.1% to 490.6M SF in H1, the third-strongest first half on record, as leases exceeding 750,000 SF drove the recovery and the construction pipeline shrank to 320M SF.

🏘️ Occupancy Rebound: Apartment absorption reached 187,000 units in Q2, according to RealPage, lifting occupancy to 95.5% for a second straight quarterly gain as annual supply fell below the decade norm for the first time in three years.

🏆 TOP STORY
THE PERMIT TRENDS SHAPING TOMORROW'S RENT WARS

The next rent war won't be announced. It's already filed away in city permit offices, one approval at a time. Multifamily permitting is splitting into two markets: metros still green-lighting supply at full speed, and metros slamming the brakes. For anyone underwriting a hold period, that split is a map of where lease-up gets harder and where existing assets get breathing room.

The top 10 permitting metros pulled 145,720 units through approvals in the year ending May, up 24.4% YoY, according to RealPage. Seven of the 10 posted average gains above 43%.

Los Angeles posted the most dramatic swing anywhere. Permits jumped 93.9% YoY in a market long defined by high demand and high barriers to building. New York leads the nation in volume at 33,079 permits, up 26.1%, with Dallas at 19,104, up 22.5%.

• Where Pipelines Are Filling: Miami climbed 63.7% to 11,189 permits and Washington, D.C., surged 42.7% to 10,666, with Raleigh-Durham up 24.2% and Denver up 30.2%. Owners in these metros should expect heavier competition, pressure on rents, and lease-up strategies that demand precise positioning once projects deliver.

• Where Pipelines Are Thinning: San Antonio permits fell 76.8%, Las Vegas dropped 36.7%, Austin declined 33.3%, and Anaheim slipped 32.2%. Fewer approvals today mean a thinner pipeline several years out — support for occupancy and rent growth on existing assets if demand holds.

• Where it Actually Plays Out: RealPage's jurisdiction-level data puts Los Angeles, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Miami, Columbus, Phoenix, unincorporated Harris County, Denver, and Atlanta among the top permit issuers — the submarkets where clusters of new product will land closest to existing doors.

The momentum is not a one-month blip. Los Angeles increased permits 47.6% through the first half of 2026 and Washington, D.C. rose 42.5%, with New York and Raleigh-Durham also posting first-half gains. Permits are the earliest reliable signal in the supply chain — they show up two to three years before a leasing office opens.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Today's permit ledger is tomorrow's competitive landscape. Buyers weighing heavy-pipeline metros like Miami and D.C. are underwriting against deliveries that haven't broken ground yet, while owners in San Antonio, Austin, and Las Vegas are looking at a supply lull that favors the assets already standing. The window between now and those deliveries is where pricing, positioning, and hold-period math get decided.

🤝 TOGETHER WITH M1 REAL CAPITAL
THE RAISE DOESN’T BREAK WHEN INVESTORS SAY NO

The raise breaks when investor attention outpaces your team's capacity to manage it.

More meetings. More follow-ups. More diligence requests. What looks like momentum becomes operational drag. Updates go out late, conversations stall, interested investors go quiet. Not because demand disappeared. Because the infrastructure behind the raise couldn't keep up.

M1 has built a 9-figure capital-raising track record across multiple funds and market cycles, with 506(c) and institutional-grade positioning for raises from $1 million to $100 million-plus. What gets installed: investor-ready positioning, predictable investor flow, and scalable raise infrastructure built to repeat.

This is for fund managers and syndicators ready to move beyond referrals and warm introductions, not first-time investors without a defined strategy, or anyone looking for shortcuts.

Book a Capital Constraints Call to map the systems your next raise needs.

🌟 BEST EVER INNER CIRCLE
ONE MONTH UNTIL CINCINNATI. HERE’S WHAT MEMBERS HAVE BEEN WORKING ON.

In one month, members of the Best Ever Inner Circle will meet in Cincinnati for our annual offsite, a full day dedicated to helping each other raise capital, find more deals, and build stronger relationships.

But the Cincinnati offsite isn't where the conversations begin. It's where months of collaboration come together.

Over the past few weeks, Inner Circle members have:

🏢 Acquired or put 686 units under contract, including a 188-unit multifamily in Arlington, a 121-unit in Fort Worth, a 72-unit in Northwest Arkansas, a 22-unit in Virginia, and a 283-lot mobile home park portfolio in Alabama.

💰 Raised and deployed more than $18 million in capital, including one member who raised $11 million through RIAs, another who raised $3.3 million through podcast listeners and personal branding, and another who secured $3 million for a Fort Worth acquisition.

🤖 Built AI-powered underwriting and automation workflows to evaluate deals faster, summarize underwriting, automate investor outreach, and eliminate hours of manual work. Members have also been sharing their systems with the group so others can implement them.

🧠 Worked through real business challenges like lender negotiations, partnership structures, capital raises, debt fund launches, broker outreach, and investor messaging with feedback from experienced operators.

🚀 Prepared for what's next, with members actively raising capital, launching new funds, hiring investor relations talent, and expanding into new markets.

The Best Ever Inner Circle isn't another mastermind. It's a growth system for experienced operators who want to raise capital, find more deals, and grow faster.

Join us in Cincinnati!

Schedule a quick introductory call to see if the Best Ever Inner Circle is the right fit. Join before July 31, and you'll be invited to our Cincinnati offsite and receive a complimentary Best Ever newsletter sponsorship (a $6,000 value).

💰 CRE BY THE NUMBERS
THE WAGE GAP, A STORAGE SHUTDOWN, AND MORE

🏗️ 1.18 Million

Total U.S. housing starts fell to an annualized 1.18 million units in May, the lowest reading since April 2020, as single-family completions dropped 16.8% YoY. Meanwhile, wages rose 3.8% in Q1 against home prices that have stayed roughly flat since early 2025, slowly closing the affordability gap without triggering new construction. Fewer new homes should ease pressure on apartment owners through at least 2027.

Supply Glut: Unsold new homes reached 10.3 months of supply in May, the highest since mid-2022, as sales slid to 580,000 — the second-lowest annual rate in three years. Builders are responding by waiting for buyers before breaking ground.

📦 180 Days

Atlanta's City Council has unanimously frozen new self-storage construction for 180 days, arguing the facilities span whole blocks, generate few jobs, and curtail commercial vitality. The moratorium buys time for land-use rules steering key corridors toward housing, restaurants, and walkable retail instead.

🛍️ 71%

Among aspirational luxury shoppers earning $100,000 or more, 71% still buy at brand-owned stores, and more than two-thirds report being extremely satisfied there versus roughly half on brand websites. Pampering, human interaction, and style advice keep the physical store the channel to beat — good news for high-end retail landlords.

🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
HOW ONE OPERATOR REPLACED 10 HIRES WITH AI

While some CRE firms question whether AI actually delivers, Justin Spillers is showing what it looks like when it does.

This week on the Best Ever CRE Show, Spillers broke down how his roughly 1,000-unit, fully vertically integrated shop — value-add multifamily along the I-75 corridor from Toledo to Cincinnati — runs AI through all six of its business divisions, from acquisitions to capital raising. The number that anchors the episode: the firm has skipped roughly 10 full-time hires in the past year because of it.

• Underwriting at Volume: Real Estate Alpha runs roughly 100 deals a month through a system that ingests offering memorandums, T12s, and P&Ls, models each deal against the firm's own assumptions, pulls rent comps and absorption data, and drafts a broker reply within the hour.

• Screening That Digs Deeper: Automated searches of county eviction and criminal court databases now surface roughly 80% of the firm's applicant disqualifications — records the standard credit and screening reports miss.

• A Scored Leasing Funnel: Every setter and leasing call is transcribed and graded against a script on a 100-point scorecard, and showings have gone fully virtual after closing at rates matching in-person tours.

The gap between Spillers and the skeptics comes down to workflow. He rebuilt his processes around the technology instead of bolting it onto the old ones, and the system sharpens with every deal, call, and move-out it ingests.

👉 Listen to the full episode here.