Just 8% of AvalonBay Tenants Left to Buy a Home — A Historic Low

Rent is the periodic payment a tenant makes to a landlord in exchange for the right to occupy a property -- the single revenue line that funds your mortgage, expenses, and profit as a rental property investor.

A multifamily property is any residential building containing two or more separate dwelling units under one roof — from a side-by-side duplex to a 300-unit apartment complex — where each unit has its own kitchen, bathroom, and entrance, and each unit generates independent rental income.

FFO (Funds from Operations) is the standard metric used to measure a REIT's recurring operating performance. It adjusts net income by adding back non-cash depreciation and amortization charges and subtracting one-time gains from property sales, leaving behind a number that reflects the actual cash-generating power of the underlying real estate portfolio.

A concession is an incentive a landlord or property manager offers to attract or retain a tenant — most commonly free rent for one or more months, a waived application or security deposit fee, or a gift card. Concessions reduce the effective rent a tenant pays below the stated face rent, and they show up as a line-item reduction on a property's trailing-12-months income statement.

A basis point (BP or BPS) is one-hundredth of one percentage point — 0.01% or 0.0001 in decimal form — used as a precise unit of measurement for interest rates, yields, spreads, and other financial figures where small changes carry large consequences.

A spread is the numerical difference between two rates or yields — most commonly the gap between real estate cap rates and 10-year Treasury yields, or between mortgage rates and benchmark interest rates. Investors read spreads as a signal of whether real estate is attractively priced, fairly valued, or dangerously expensive relative to risk-free alternatives.

Yield is the annual income an investment generates expressed as a percentage of its cost or current market value. In real estate, it answers the single most useful question at the analysis stage: how much does this asset pay me each year relative to what I put in?

The mortgage rate is the interest rate charged on a real estate loan—typically the 30-year fixed rate for residential—driven by federal-funds-rate, yield-curve, and interest-rate-cycle, affecting leverage, DSCR, and cap-rate.

Census data is demographic, economic, and housing statistics collected by the U.S. Census Bureau—population, income, housing units, commute times—available by census tract, ZIP, county, and metro.

OPM (Other People's Money) is borrowed or invested capital from third parties—banks, hard money lenders, private money lenders, seller-carryback, or syndication investors—used to acquire and operate real estate instead of your own cash.

An asset is something you own that has economic value and can generate income or appreciation. In real estate, your properties are assets — the duplex, the single-family rental, the multi-family building. They sit on your balance sheet opposite your liabilities (the mortgage, the hard money loan).

A mortgage is a loan used to purchase real estate, with the property serving as collateral—if you stop paying, the lender can foreclose and sell the property to recover their money.

Equity is the portion of a property's value you own outright—the property's value minus any loans secured against it.

A REIT is a company that owns and operates income-producing real estate. It must distribute at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders as dividends. That lets you invest in property without buying buildings yourself.

NOI (net operating income) is what a property earns from operations each year. Rental revenue minus vacancy loss and operating expenses. Before you subtract the mortgage, CapEx, or taxes.

Cap rate measures a property's annual net operating income as a percentage of its purchase price or current market value, assuming an all-cash purchase.