Q2 2026 Investment Insight: Navigating Market Realities & Unlocking Real Estate Opportunities
As global macroeconomic and geopolitical dynamics continue to shape the investment landscape, co-CEO and chief investment officer Whitson Huffman addresses today’s market realities and outlines where Capital Square sees opportunity in real estate in our Q2 2026 Investment Insight video:
Approximate Transcript:
A question we’ve been getting recently is, “how are we positioning our offerings, given the geopolitical environment and everything going on the world?”
It’s a really fair question. There are a lot of things going on. At top of mind right now is the war with Iran, and there’s a ton of questions. How long will it last? What does it mean for global oil output? Are the Straits of Hormuz open?
And while real estate is seemingly so simple, things like this in the global context do have an impact to how we think about real estate, how we price our investments, and how we think about our existing portfolio. There’s obvious things inside of real estate, like commodities and all the things that oil touches and how it relates to input costs for development. That also stems to things like DSTs.
When we think about capital reserves and projects, something as seemingly obvious as a asphalt resurfacing of an apartment building. Really easy, really straightforward. What if the cost of the asphalt is higher? What do you do and how do you position it? When we’re underwriting new deals, how has the underwriting changed to account for today’s world? And is that the prudent thing to do? Is it a flash in the pan? Will it continue?
We’ve learned a lot over the last nearly 14 years as a company at Capitol Square. In the eight years that I’ve been here, one of the things that stands out at top of mind is nothing lasts forever. When it was 2021, 2022, and inflation was transitory. I think we all bought into that concept. Now, granted, COVID was a recent phenomenon. We were dealing with the hangover of 2020 in the first part of 2021. It was really scary. There really wasn’t a ton of else to do but to listen to the experts.
When we take a step back and we think about that window in time, it was great for many reasons. Time spent at home with loved ones. I think I walked more in my neighborhood than I have in my entire life combined. It’s probably the fittest I ever will be in my life.
But the market was overheated. Cap rates were incredibly tight. Interest rates were incredibly low, and that inflation component was supposed to be transitory. It wasn’t going to be permanent. Rates stayed low until they didn’t cap. Cap rates stayed low until they didn’t rent. Growth continued to grow until it stopped. And when we think about the context of today’s environment, you have to look at something like Iran. Is it stopped for now? Will it continue?
Nobody has a crystal ball. We have to do the best with the information that we have. But as we think about how we structure these investments, we need to make them weatherproof, durable, all-season. It needs to work in a higher rate environment – pretty much anything works in a low-rate environment.
In a volatile environment, in a world where we don’t know what’s going to come next, how do we position offerings today in 2026 to do well and be all weather?
We’re looking at it from two lenses. The first all cash offerings, taking the debt capital markets out of risk. That’s a very seemingly easy way to alleviate a lot of the pressure inside of a cap stack, and certainly for a DST, that is one of the measures that we look at. How easy is it to overcome both the load but also to pay off that senior mortgage, to operate flexibly, to be able to make investor distributions. It’s a lot easier, and you have a lot more runway, when it’s an all-cash deal.
So, you’ve probably noticed we’ve done a lot more all cash offerings, but there’s a fundamental issue with that inside the DST landscape. Folks need equal or greater debt on their up leg. If you’re coming out with 50% LTV at your sale, you need to match that with 50 plus percent leverage in your DST investment. So, we’ve certainly seen a barbell. You have all cash offerings, and you have offerings that really need and want to be above 50% loaded leverage.
Inside of that 50% plus loaded leverage offering, you have to be really disciplined about where you pick your spot.
When we look inside of our portfolio, there’s a lot to like. Our portfolio is broadly well occupied. Coming out of the seasonal lows of winter leasing, we’re sitting today about 93 and a half trending towards 94% occupancy. It’s a really great number. However, we know that there’s a lot of difference between an asset operating in a high supply market and a low supply market.
When we look at properties and see ones that are exactly where we thought they would be, and ones that are behind, the common denominator is often that supply equation. Now, if you bought a deal in 2018, 2019, you probably had a good view into what supply would be two years out. But five, six, seven years in, there’s a lot of projects that were started and delivered that nobody ever thought about or thought would come into existence, so, supply that you couldn’t account for. With the information that we have today, we can account for that supply and what we know about.
And to go back to my earlier point, everything lasts until it doesn’t, everybody is saying supply has dropped off. Supply is coming down. It’s not expected to pick back up. Well, what if it does? Let’s take that information and look through a lens with which we say, “Hey, where are markets that are performing well? If we look at lease-ups broadly for our development business, what micro locations are leasing up really well? Not just Richmond, Scott’s addition neighborhood, the West End, Midlothian, broadly the south side. If we’re looking at Tennessee, how does Chattanooga compare to Knoxville? And what does the supply story look like?
When we look at the menu of options, the areas that are most appealing to us right now are often lower secondary or tertiary markets. Those gateway Southeastern markets – Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, just to name a few – have high supply, and with that high supply, you see muted, negative rent growth that hasn’t alleviated the inflationary pressures and operating expenses (OpEx). Payroll is higher. We’ve got to pay our folks more. Their cost of living is higher, very, very easy to understand and digest. Your leasing managers, your property managers, they have to live too. And if you can’t afford or pay competitive payroll rates, you can’t operate your asset to this optimal level.
We’ve seen inflation inside of insurance. In many instances, we’ve seen 200 to 300% insurance growth over a two-to-three-year window. You can’t project storms. That’s really unknowable, and to an extent, we know they will happen, but the degree to which they happen and their impact economically, it’s really hard to forecast and account for.
So, with the information that we have today, those secondary and tertiary markets, we think afford the best opportunity for stability, because at the end of the day, our DST investors have broadly won. They’ve been able to defer the tax. They’ve executed an exchange. Louis would say, “They’re well on their way to swapping till they drop.”
But we know that they’re depending on that income. They’re depending on us to perform. And so, as we look at the universe, you’re going to see more Capital Square offerings in secondary and tertiary markets, where there’s just fundamentally less supply and less pressure on rents. We think that will lead to better portfolio performance but also to better investor outcomes in the long run.
A lot of investors look at Capital Square, and they think of us as a multifamily shop. I think that’s a very fair assessment. Multifamily is our bread and butter. It is the preponderance of our portfolio, both on the existing acquisition side but also on the development side. But there are ways to innovate inside of housing. It’s not all created equal.
There’s age-restricted seniors housing, independent living, and one area that’s been of acute focus for us is cottage style, age-restricted housing, single-story homes, one to two bedrooms with their garage, ADA compliant, fixtures, finishes, bathrooms. Really seeking that demographic that is looking to unlock trapped equity inside of their home, to write a singular rent check at the first of every month, and have to think about nothing else. When we look at that performance as an asset class, well, first off, there’s really not a lot of it.
We think we have a special sauce in terms of our ability to source that through a variety of partners across the South and specifically in Texas. But we also think that as we look at that landscape, it’s only going to be a growing segment for investors. Institutional investors are looking for it as well. That should compress pricing. And so in all ways, we think that is a really interesting way to get at housing in a market that has none of the supply headwinds that multifamily has.
Multifamily presents tremendous opportunities broadly. We’ve had softening cap rates. We have markets that are not supplied to the extent that you see in Atlanta or Dallas, and you’re seeing rent growth. Those are really interesting opportunities, but these stable, age-restricted cottage-style communities are an outlier from a performance perspective. The rent growth has been consistent during COVID, after COVID. The operating expense elevations have been needed relative to multifamily and so in all ways, they’ve been performing better the last couple years, and we can think that performance will continue.
And so, while we would hope investors see us as a housing shop, we would hope they see us as exactly that: housing broadly, not just multifamily apartments.
At Capital Square, we like to think we have our finger on the pulse. Markets go up; markets go down. Rents rise; they fall. But at the end of the day, what is going to drive performance is attention to detail, energy, effort and execution. And every day, when we wake up, we bring that to the table under the guise of trying to execute successful outcomes for investors, their advisors and their families.
Disclosure: Securities offered through WealthForge Securities, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. Capital Square and WealthForge Securities, LLC are separate entities. There are material risks associated with investing in DST properties and real estate securities including illiquidity, tenant vacancies, general market conditions and competition, lack of operating history, interest rate risks, the risk of new supply coming to market and softening rental rates, general risks of owning/operating commercial and multifamily properties, short-term leases associated with multifamily properties, financing risks, potential adverse tax consequences, general economic risks, development risks, long hold periods, and potential loss of the entire investment principal. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Potential cash flow, returns and appreciation are not guaranteed. IRC Section 1031 is a complex tax concept; consult your legal or tax professional regarding the specifics of your particular situation. This is not a solicitation or an offer to see any securities. Please read the Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) in its entirety, paying careful attention to the risk section prior to investing. Diversification does not guarantee profits or protect against l
