💸 Why 15% of renters are paying late, or not at all

👋 Happy Sunday, Best Ever readers!

In today’s newsletter, renters get scared, Trump threatens Powell, coworking underwhelms, North Dakota wins, Florida loses, and much more.

Today’s edition is presented by Real Estate Alpha, Pitch Slam 2026 winner. Traditional syndications ask you to accept variable returns, long lockups, and an LP position at the bottom of the capital stack. Real Estate Alpha offers fixed 12% annually (15-19% effective with tax deferral), 90-day liquidity after year one, and a preferred equity position above the operators. See why investors are choosing this structure over traditional syndications. Learn more today.

 🎯 This Thursday we're hosting a free webinar you don't want to miss. Three private debt strategies. Up to 20.4% annual cash flow. Secured by real assets. April 23 at 1pm ET — grab your spot.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

🤼 Trump v. Powell: President Trump has threatened to fire Jerome Powell from his Federal Reserve board seat if Powell doesn't vacate it when his term as Fed chair ends May 15, as an ongoing criminal probe complicates Kevin Warsh's confirmation hearing scheduled for April 21.

🏗️ Flex Freeze: U.S. coworking has reached 9,135 locations and 164M SF of flex space, yet still accounts for just 2.3% of total office inventory — well short of the industry's 30% target — as a new Yardi index begins tracking penetration across 120 metros monthly.

🏘️ Bill Fallout: A Senate bill's proposed seven-year forced-sale provision for build-to-rent communities has effectively halted the market even before becoming law, with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and institutional equity pulling back as developers report capital has gone pencils down.

⚡ Grid Crunch: Data centers have emerged as the primary driver of load growth for 31 of 51 major U.S. utilities, pushing investor-owned utilities to project at least $1.4 trillion in power infrastructure spending through 2030 — a 21% jump from last year's five-year outlook.

🏭 Industrial Inflection: U.S. industrial vacancy edged down 10 bps from its late 2025 peak to 7% in Q1, as new leasing hit 174M SF — the strongest first quarter since 2022 — while new supply deliveries fell to their lowest volume since mid-2017.

🏆 TOP STORY
WHY 15% OF RENTERS ARE PAYING LATE, OR NOT AT ALL

One in seven American workers missed or paid late on a housing payment in the past 90 days. That number, buried in a new Redfin survey of more than 1,000 employed adults, has nothing to do with evictions or market cycles. It has everything to do with what's sitting underneath your rent roll right now.

The financial fragility is already registering at the operator level. One 2025 renter delinquency and default report — drawing on more than 400 multifamily professionals — found 35% of operators reporting renter defaults up YoY, with 80% expecting the top drivers (cash constraints, job loss, and rent affordability) to persist into 2026. Among workers concerned about job security, Redfin found the top culprits were company performance (29%) and artificial intelligence (18%). 

That AI figure is new. It's not showing up in eviction filings yet, but it's shaping how residents think about their financial runway.

• The Collections Signal: CRED iQ data puts multifamily delinquency rates at 1.37% as of Q3 2025, the highest since the 2010 global financial crisis era. During the low-rate era from 2017 to mid-2022, that figure held between 0.23% and 0.39%. The 3.4-fold increase in two years reflects both operator-level stress and the renter financial fragility feeding it.

• The Debt Stack Problem: Rising credit card utilization (now averaging 35.5%), declining FICO scores, and a growing debt stack — credit card, auto, student, and buy-now-pay-later obligations compounding simultaneously — are among the leading indicators of rent delinquency. Over one in eight credit card accounts was more than 90 days past due as of Q1 2025.

• The Emergency Fund Gap: Only 55% of workers in the Redfin survey reported having an emergency fund to cover housing payments. Among those concerned about their job security — exactly the population most likely to miss rent — that figure drops to 50%.

The 15% late or missed payment figure in the Redfin survey is a consumer data point, not an operator dataset. But it rhymes with what multifamily professionals are already reporting, and it's arriving alongside an AI-driven anxiety that hasn't fully priced into underwriting assumptions yet.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Occupancy rates can mask what's actually happening inside a rent roll. The more useful question for operators and underwriters heading into the back half of 2026 isn't whether units are filled, it's whether the residents filling them have the financial cushion to stay current when the next disruption hits.

🤝 TOGETHER WITH REAL ESTATE ALPHA
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT ON TRADITIONAL SYNDICATION

Most real estate syndications are structured to benefit the operator first.

You come in as a limited partner, at the bottom of the capital stack. Returns are projected, not guaranteed. Your capital is locked for 3-7 years. And if the deal underperforms, you absorb the loss before anyone else.

That's the standard deal. Most investors don't realize there's an alternative.

Real Estate Alpha flips that structure entirely. Fixed 12% annual return instead of projections. Preferred equity position above the operators instead of an LP position at the bottom. 90-day liquidity after year one instead of a multi-year lockup. And an entire $75M+ portfolio of 700+ units backing your investment instead of a single deal.

Same asset class. Different structure. Entirely different outcome.

Here’s the structure investors are choosing over traditional syndications:

✅ 12% Fixed (15-19% Effective) - 12% fixed annual return, tax deferral for up to 9 years, 15-19% effective yield. More cash in your pocket, without the additional risk.

✅ Protected by 700+ Units - Backed by the equity and cash flow of a $75M+ multifamily portfolio ($32.5M operator equity protection, $700,000+/mo cashflow).

✅ 90-Day Liquidity After Year 1 - No long-term lockups. Need your capital back? 90 days' notice and it's yours.

✅ Preferred Equity Position - You have a preferred position in the capital stack and get paid before the operators do.

✅ 10-Year Track Record, 0 Missed Payments - Paid every December 31st, zero misses since day one.

Click the link below for full details and to book a 15-minute discovery call. No pitch, just a real conversation to see if it aligns with your investment strategy.

Only a small allocation remains. First come, first served. Accredited investors only.

🗺️ ON THE MAP
THE BEST (AND WORST) STATES FOR RENTERS

The best state for renters isn't California, New York, or Florida — it's North Dakota, for the third year running. A new analysis scored all 50 states across affordability, tenant protections, rental availability, and quality of life to identify where renters have it best — and worst — heading into 2026.

• No. 1, North Dakota: Renters there spend just 23.7% of their income on rent, the lowest share in the country, against a national average of 32%. The median rent sits at $954 — nearly a third below the national median — and the state carries the highest rental vacancy rate in the nation at 8.3%.

• No. 2, Colorado: The biggest mover in this year's rankings, Colorado jumped 42 places after overhauling its tenant protection laws. It's now one of just five states that limit rent increases at the state level — a factor that pushed it onto the podium despite a median rent of $1,761.

• No. 3,  Minnesota: Median rent runs about 9% below the national median, annual rent growth is a modest 3.6% YoY, and 86% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park or green space.

Wyoming and Utah round out the top five, each making significant climbs in this year's rankings on the strength of affordability and rental availability.

Florida claimed the bottom spot — and it isn't close. Renters there spend 37.4% of their income on housing, the highest share in the country, against a median rent 18% above the national figure. Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Massachusetts complete the five worst, each struggling with some combination of high costs, weak tenant protections, and low availability.

👉 View the full lists here.

📩 YOU’RE INVITED
ARE YOU ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS TRADE?

While equity markets stay volatile, private credit lenders are quietly collecting double-digit returns — secured by real assets and paid through consistent distributions.

Chris Lopez and Richard McGirr, Co-Founders of Property Llama, are hosting a free webinar on Thursday, April 23, at 1 pm ET to show accredited investors exactly how to access this opportunity.

You'll learn:

• Why private credit lenders are being overcompensated for risk right now

• How three non-correlated strategies work together to deliver 16.4%–20.4% annual cash flow

• Which strategy — or combination — fits your portfolio

This one is worth your hour. Can’t make it? Register anyway, and we’ll send you the replay.

🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
THE TRUTH ABOUT INFINITE HOLD PERIODS

Infinite hold periods have quietly become one of the most debated structures in multifamily syndication — and J Scott thinks most of them don't hold up.

On a recent episode of the Best Ever CRE Show, J Scott joined Ash Patel and Amanda Cruise to make the case that generational funds are less a wealth-building strategy than a cover for deals that don't pencil on a normal timeline.

• The Core Argument: Operators pitching decade-long holds rarely lead with tax efficiency or compounding equity. They lead with it because a three-to-five-year exit would expose the deal as one that doesn’t pencil on a shorter timeframe. "In real estate, a long runway could outrun a lot of bad deals," Scott said. LPs who've been through this cycle are starting to ask harder questions about why the hold period keeps getting longer.

• The Refinance Myth: The structure most commonly sold — refinance in three to five years, return capital, retain equity — works in theory but almost never in practice. Negative leverage on high-rate debt makes it nearly impossible to engineer a refinance that actually returns meaningful capital to investors on that timeline.

• What Honest Underwriting Looks Like: Scott surveys his investors before every deal — asking what return profile, hold period, and liquidity preference they actually want. If the deal can't be structured around those answers, he doesn't force it.

The tells are in the pitch. When a GP can't explain why the hold period is what it is in terms of the underlying deal economics, the LP doesn’t have to ask. They already have the answer.

🎙️ Listen to J Scott’s full episode here.