Again, like Real says, its highly regional. In my area, all the investor/flipper/speculators that can't sell their residential homes have decided they are going to "ride the market out" and therefore rent them. That extra supply of rentals is currently driving rental rates down in the immediate short-term. This raises the CAP rate for sellers/owners of multi-unit residential and therefore lowers their overall market value. After all, one of the "laws" of real estate investment is that in a market prone to fast appreciation, it's next to impossible to find a rental property (whether single or multi-unit) that will cash flow. Therefore, unless you find a 'steal of a deal,' or put a large down payment on your purchase, a property is not going to cash flow in a market like FL, CA, AZ, NV etc. The best multi-unit residential buys I have ever found are always in stale, stagnant or snail-paced markets like the Rust Belt or the plain states.
Even when the market is in decline like it is now, typically prices are so far out ahead of rental rates that you can't make the numbers work. So to answer your question further, in my area income producing residential properties are suffering. Commercial retail, office and light industrial is doing average. Heavy industrial is doing spectacular since Jax port is expanding so rapidly (we actually are close to a negative vacancy rate for industrial).
"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." C.S. Lewis
www.younglife.org
