Metro Areas Leaders For Job Growth

The annual benchmark revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) drastically changed the employment data for a number of markets around the country. Each April, the BLS utilizes data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages to revise not seasonally adjusted employment levels for the past two years, which then affect the calculated annual change in employment or job gain numbers for the previous 12 months.

Asheville, NC finished just outside the top 10 at number 12 on the most recent list.

Source: RealPage

Liability Insurance Costs Surge For Landlords Nationwide

Lawsuit surge – Federal tort cases rose 20% between 2022–2024; premises liability claims jumped from 4,516 to 5,632 cases in the same period. The severity of general liability claims has risen 57% over the last decade.

Nuclear verdicts – Premises liability verdicts exceeding $10M rose 52% in 2024 vs. 2023. Mass shootings have doubled in 10 years, contributing to these outsized awards.

Premium explosion – Liability insurance rates rose 9% in Q4 2025 even as overall insurance rates fell 8%. General liability specifically rose 30%+ in some cases. One landlord cited umbrella/excess premiums quadrupling since 2020.

Plaintiff bar advertising – Morgan & Morgan spends $350M/year on ads, and the broader personal injury industry is aggressively marketing to potential claimants — including those with minor or fabricated injuries.

Carrier pullback – Insurers are adding exclusions (sexual abuse, firearms, animal attacks) and refusing to cover buildings with crime scores above 30, pushing more landlords into the surplus lines market at even higher cost.

Uneven playing field – Large portfolio owners have negotiating leverage; smaller landlords do not, leaving them more exposed.

“Landlords are taking on a lot more risk than they ever have, and they are not set up to do so.”

Source: BisNow

The Fastest Growing U.S. Metros

The population of the U.S. expanded by 0.5% from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates. 10 of the nation’s metro areas posted population growth of 2.4% or more:

Looking at numeric growth, all but one South region metro area ranked among the nation’s top 10 for population increases:

Among the nation’s 10 largest metro areas, only two saw population declines:

10 of the nation’s metro areas saw population growth slow by more than 1.2%:

Source: RealPage

Senior Housing Supply & Demand Trends

Senior housing construction trends are telling a very clear story. Development activity across the sector has slowed materially, with new inventory growth, active construction volume, and construction starts all trending down.

Combined with accelerating demand, the data suggests that the sector is in a sustained period where supply growth cannot keep pace with the demographic demand forming ahead. The development cycle in senior housing is long, and the projects that are—or are not—starting today will shape the availability of new communities for years to come.

The first indication of this shift appears in the pace of new inventory growth. Annual inventory growth, measured as the net change in operational units, has fallen below 1% for three consecutive quarters. What makes this observation particularly notable is that the slowdown is occurring simultaneously across both Majority Independent Living (IL) and Majority Assisted Living (AL) properties.

There has never been a period when both property types experienced inventory growth this slow at the same time. Over the long history of the sector, development cycles have often varied between property types. Today, however, the slowdown is broad-based.

What makes the current level of construction starts notable is how it compares with demand trends across the sector. Absorption—defined as the net increase in occupied units—has remained strong, indicating that demand for senior housing communities continues to grow.

For an industry with a development cycle that can easily span two or more years from planning to completion, the slowdown in construction starts today has long-term implications for the availability of new communities in the years to follow.

At the same time, demographic demand is beginning to accelerate as the oldest baby boomers approach their 80s. Absorption trends across the sector indicate that new residents continue to enter the market at an elevated pace compared to historical norms and at a steady pace in recent years, indicating a new benchmark for annual demand. 

This dynamic is already setting the stage for a multi-year supply constraint. With relatively few communities currently under development across many markets, the industry will experience a period where new inventory growth remains limited while demand continues to build. In such an environment, industry occupancy will rise to historic levels, operators gain stronger pricing power, and margins can improve. 

Source: NIC Map

Positioning For The Real Asset Cycle

As investment allocations to private markets have grown, so has the need for discernment. Private markets are not monolithic, and their underlying drivers move differently through the cycle. Some strategies remain tightly linked to monetary policy; others are grounded in property level cash flows and long-term structural forces. As conditions evolve, so too must capital positioning.

At this point in the cycle, real asset strategies—particularly private real estate—stand out. Their drivers are rooted in tangible demand and operational execution, and their valuation and income profiles look distinctly different from other parts of the private markets landscape.

From an allocation standpoint, real assets stand out for a different reason: they are typically less reactive to short-term market sentiment, correlated instead to long-term structural forces, such as supply imbalances and operating performance. For investors, they offer a compelling proposition as the cycle shifts: income and value creation anchored in the real economy, while participating in the long-term upside potential of real assets.

Why Private Real Estate Now?

  • Income generation: Over the past two decades, more than 80% of long-term returns for a group of core private real estate funds tracked by NCREIF came from income. Notably, these distributions were tied to property level cash flows, including rents and lease structures, rather than policy rates. Those distributions can be highly tax efficient and, in many cases, competitive with or potentially superior to after tax yields from private corporate lending.
  • Cyclical upside potential: Real estate values remain below prior peaks after a significant reset that began in mid 2022. Over this period, private real estate underperformed private corporate debt; if performance were to revert toward historical relationships, closing that gap implies potential upside approaching 60%.

Looking across three comparable downturns, similar resets were followed by nearly 20% outperformance over the subsequent five years. Early signals have been giving a strong read that the turn is underway: core private real estate indices have now posted six consecutive quarters of positive returns after seven quarters of declines, suggesting the trough may be behind us.

Capital flows show allocators are beginning to move. Among the largest non traded equity REITs, new investment activity has strengthened: capital raised over the first three quarters of 2025 is up 36% versus 2024, and net flows have shifted from negative to decisively positive. These are the kinds of signals we would expect as investors acknowledge the valuation reset and the compelling forward return profile of private real estate.

In today’s shifting environment, many investors risk finding themselves in overweight strategies whose strongest tailwinds are beginning to fade. After several years where elevated base rates created exceptionally strong income conditions, certain allocations now sit at cycle highs in portfolio weighting without the same income profile that supported them. Private corporate debt is one example of this dynamic at work: its role as a dependable income engine remains intact, but the forces that propelled its multi-year run have naturally been moderating.

At the same time, private real estate has been entering a very different part of the cycle, offering: 

  • potentially durable, property level income;
  • historically attractive entry valuation;
  • visible recovery potential; and
  • direct alignment with long term real asset demand.

Source: Hines