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Multifamily Stock Index Hits an All-Time High

“The health of apartment company stocks on Wall Street is another sign of the overall strength of the housing market in this country,” said NAHB President Bobby Rayburn. “With the echo boom generation now moving into prime renting age and immigration levels expected to remain stable or even increase, the long-term outlook for multifamily housing looks very good indeed.”

NAHB’s Multifamily Stock Index tracks the total returns (including capital gains and dividends) of 28 publicly traded firms principally involved in the ownership and management of apartments.

During the month of June, the MFSI rose by 53 points, or almost 3%, to 1,882, an all-time high for the index and 22% higher than a year earlier.

“Apartment stocks remain a darling for investors because they have offered attractive returns compared with other investment opportunities over the past five years,” said Elliot Eisenberg, a housing policy economist at NAHB and creator of the index.

“Despite the consistently strong showing of the S&P 500 over the past year, the MFSI has outperformed it,” he said. “In fact, since December 1998 the MFSI has risen by 88%, while the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested has gained only 0.5%.”

NAHB created the index in 2002 to track the performance of public firms involved in multifamily housing. To allow for historical comparisons to be made between the MFSI and other financial indexes, the starting point for tracking performance data for these publicly traded firms was set at Dec. 31, 1998. The MSFI appears monthly in NAHB’s electronic newsletter, Multifamily Market Outlook.

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