| CREOP

Hickory can be characterized as a tertiary apartment market with a small apartment footprint, and 14 market-rate transactions closed in the past 12 months, which was about average for its cohort. That was more of the same relative to the five-year average in the metro. Annual sales volume has averaged $46.0 million over the past five years, and the 12-month high in investment volume hit $172 million over that stretch. In the past 12 months specifically, $158 million worth of multifamily assets sold. Deals involving mid-tier apartments influenced that sales volume in the past year, with $101 million invested in the market. *CoStar
Market pricing, derived from the estimated price movement of all market-rate properties in the region, sat around $140,000/unit during the first quarter of 2023. That price has soared since last year, rising by more than 10%, and the price is a large discount relative to the average apartment price in the United States. The market cap rate has dropped since last year. It is the lowest cap rate that has been seen in Hickory during the past five years, and it's close to the country's average. *CoStar

Apartment rents in the Hickory market were rising at a 6.6% annual rate during the first quarter of 2023, and have posted an average annual gain of 6.5% over the past three years. In addition to 1,300 units that have delivered over the past three years (a cumulative inventory expansion of 21.3%), there are 630 units currently underway. Vacancies in the metro were a bit above the 10-year average as of 2023Q1, and trended upward over the past four quarters. *CoStar
Employment in the metro was recently increasing at an annual rate of 2.6%, or a gain of about 3,900 jobs. While a positive result, this does represent the weakest rate of job creation in the past twelve months, which at one point was as high as 4.1%. *Costar