A friend of mine has been investing in apartments for over 30 years. He’s quietly built real wealth through multiple cycles. Seen the highs, lived through the lows, kept investing through all of it.

Over lunch recently, he said something I haven’t been able to shake. “Everyone’s waiting for the perfect signal. But the signal might’ve already happened. Most people just didn’t notice because they were too busy reading headlines.”

That stuck with me. Because right now, apartment investing is in a strange place. The data is actually getting better, but the mood hasn’t caught up. And if you understand how cycles work, you know that gap between how people feel and what the numbers say is usually where the best opportunities live.

I’ve written before about why good real estate deals are struggling right now. The short version: most of the pain in this cycle came from the debt, not the properties. Rates moved fast, short-term loans got expensive, and deals that were operationally sound got squeezed by financing that couldn’t adapt.

That’s the backstory. Today I want to talk about what comes next.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Any investment involves risk, and you should consult your financial advisor, attorney, or CPA before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author and associated entities disclaim any liability for loss incurred as a result of the use of this material or its content.

What 2022 Actually Did to the Market

You can’t understand where we are without understanding what happened. Starting in March 2022, the Fed raised rates by 5 full percentage points over about 17 months. That was one of the most aggressive rate hike cycles in over 40 years.

The effects were immediate. Short-term loans got expensive overnight. Monthly payments on variable-rate debt jumped. Interest rate caps, which used to cost almost nothing, were suddenly running hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And all of this hit while rents were flattening and costs like insurance were climbing.

If you invested in a passive deal around 2020 or 2021 and the returns haven’t looked anything like the projections, this is a big part of why. It wasn’t necessarily a bad deal or a bad operator. It was a market-wide shock.

I want to be honest about something here. I’ve been investing in real estate now for close to 20 years. In that time, I’ve had deals that meaningfully changed our trajectory. Deals I’m genuinely grateful I had the courage to get into. But I’ve also had deals that haven’t performed. I’ve lost money. Some I’m still watching to see how they play out.

So if you’ve been sitting with a quarterly report that doesn’t look anything like what you were shown when you invested, I understand. I’ve been there too.

The Concept That Changed How I Think About It

There’s a concept called vintage risk. The idea comes from the wine world, where the year of the grape harvest can change the quality of the wine significantly from one year to the next.

Investing works the same way. The year you enter a deal matters. If you invested in 2021 with cheap variable debt and aggressive assumptions, your vintage was tough. That doesn’t mean you made a bad decision with the information available at the time. It means the environment shifted in a way almost nobody predicted.

The flip side is also true. If you’re looking at a deal today, with better pricing, fixed-rate debt, and a motivated seller, that’s a completely different vintage.

Here’s why this matters. The people who called the top in 2021 also called it in 2018, 2016, and 2014. Eventually they were right, but they missed years of solid returns while they waited. That’s why I invest consistently. Not recklessly. I still vet deals carefully. But I stay in the game through every part of the cycle. Because over 10, 15, 20 years, time in the market beats timing the market.

Not every deal has been a winner. And I’m still investing. Those two things aren’t contradictory. They’re the whole point.

Where Things Stand Right Now

Interest rates. The federal funds rate is sitting at 3.5% to 3.75%. The Fed cut rates three times in late 2025, bringing us down from the peak of 5.25%. For apartment investors specifically, mortgage rates on multifamily properties start around 5.1% for the best loan products, with averages closer to 6.2%.

Rates are not going back to 3%. That era is over. But honestly, that’s a good thing. The low-rate environment is what created the frenzy, the overleveraged deals, the aggressive projections that blew up. A higher-rate environment forces better underwriting, more conservative assumptions, and more discipline. Deals that pencil out at today’s rates are built on a more honest foundation.

Property values. Back in 2021, cap rates hit historic lows around 3.8% nationally. Since the rate hikes, they’ve climbed to about 5.7% and have stayed there for seven straight quarters. That’s the longest plateau in 25 years.

What does that mean practically? The market has already repriced. If you were nervous about buying at the top, that concern is largely behind us. When an operator today projects a 5.5% going-in return based on current income, that’s a fundamentally different proposition than someone projecting 3.5% in 2021 and hoping appreciation would make up the difference.

The debt maturity wall. Apartment loans maturing in 2026 are expected to hit around $162 billion, a 56% jump from last year. A lot of that debt was originated in 2021 and 2022 when terms were easy. Some borrowers will manage the refinance. But some won’t. And when they can’t, those properties end up on the market at discounted prices.

For patient investors, this creates a window. Distressed deals that everyone has been talking about for three years are actually starting to appear.

Supply is dropping. After years of heavy apartment construction, the new supply pipeline is shrinking fast. In markets that saw the biggest building booms, like Austin, Denver, and Phoenix, new deliveries are projected to drop 40 to 50% this year. At the same time, demand for apartments is holding up. The monthly cost premium to buy a home versus renting is over 100% in many markets. When supply drops and demand stays strong, fundamentals shift back in favor of property owners.

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How to Think About Your Next Move

If you’re a physician sitting on some capital and wondering whether now is the time to invest or wait, here’s how I’d think about it.

Be selective, not passive. This is not a market where every deal works. If someone is showing you a deal that only makes sense if rents grow 4% a year and rates drop another full point, that’s a hope-based investment. The deals worth looking at work based on the income the property generates right now.

Understand the debt. Ask what kind of loan the operator plans to use. Fixed or variable? What’s the term? When does it mature? A lot of the pain in this cycle came from variable-rate, short-term debt. Fixed-rate debt at today’s rates gives you stability and predictability.

Vet the operator through the cycle. Did they communicate honestly when things got tough? Did they do everything they could to protect investor capital? Did they survive? The operators who made it through the last three years without blowing up are the ones worth investing with going forward. This cycle was a stress test.

Think about your timeline. Passive real estate is a long-term play. Five years minimum, usually longer. The short-term noise, the headlines, the rate speculation, none of that matters if the deal is underwritten correctly and you’re in with the right people.

The Window Won’t Stay Open Forever

I’m not going to tell you this is the perfect time to invest. I don’t believe in that framing. Nobody can time the market perfectly.

But the conditions that made the last few years so painful have largely cleared. Property values have reset. Debt is more expensive but more stable. The speculative buyers have stepped back. And for patient, educated investors, the setup is better than it’s been in years.

The window where you can be selective, buy at better prices, and partner with proven operators doesn’t stay open forever. It closes when sentiment catches up to the data and everyone starts competing again.

My friend at lunch wasn’t saying he had some secret insight. He was saying that by the time everyone agrees it’s safe, the best opportunities have already been taken. That’s how cycles work.

If you’ve been listening to all of this and thinking, “I get the big picture, but I still don’t really know how to evaluate a deal or vet an operator,” that’s exactly what we cover inside the Passive Real Estate Academy.

We walk through how to analyze deals, read the numbers, ask the right questions, and understand where we are in the cycle. In a market like this, the education matters more than ever. This is when the best deals are available, but only if you know how to find them.

Learn more about PREA here.

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Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.

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