Location Strategy Chartbook 05.16.2026

The US 30-year yield briefly hit its highest level since July 2007. The selloff came as crude oil prices climbed and the US-Chinese summit failed to deliver any breakthroughs toward ending the conflict. That’s compounding worries sparked by back-to-back US government reports that revealed a sharp rise in consumer and wholesale prices, fueling speculation that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will need to shift to tightening monetary policy.

Kevin Gordon, Schwab: The 10y Treasury yield is currently seeing its largest weekly increase since April 2025

Biggest weekly increase for the 2y Treasury yield since April 2025

Homebuilders relative to the S&P 500 ... four years of relative gains taken out

NY Fed manufacturing index's prices paid component shot up to +62.6 in May

Initial claims for U.S. unemployment insurance totaled 211,00 for the week ended May 9, marking an increase of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised level, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Initial claims have fluctuated in recent weeks but have generally ranged between 200,000 and 250,000 for much of the past year.

April’s U.S. retail and food service sales increased 0.5% from the previous month and rose 4.9% from a year earlier, as consumers continued to spend more on household necessities like gasoline, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday. Based on corporate surveys and subject to revision, government data showed total sales reaching $757.1 billion.

“Retail sales continued to grow in April despite higher gas prices driven by the ongoing conflict in Iran, cautious consumer sentiment and the persistent concerns about sustained inflation,” Matthew Shay, CEO of the National Retail Federation, said in a statement from the trade group.

Applied Optoelectronics has signed multiple industrial leases in greater Houston, signaling how aggressively suppliers are scaling to meet the voracious demand for data center support systems.

The company disclosed its latest deal in a securities filing, agreeing to take 736,216 square feet with landlord Crow Holdings.

Long defined by oil, gas and petrochemicals, Houston is now adding a new role as a manufacturing and logistics center for the artificial intelligence boom. A surge of large industrial leases by AI hardware suppliers reflects how quickly the region is being pulled into the data center supply chain as operators scramble to add capacity for power‑hungry computing.

Throw in other deals Applied Optoelectronics has executed this year, and the networking component manufacturer has added roughly 1.5 million square feet to its Houston-area footprint in 2026 alone.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development–insured multifamily financing is moving firmly into the mainstream in 2026, as faster execution, looser underwriting and a wave of proposed policy changes broaden the program's appeal beyond its traditional borrower base.

Through April, the agency has securitized $6.36 billion in multifamily and senior housing loans, according to CoStar data — a 51% increase from $4.21 billion during the same period last year.

Processing timelines have shortened and internal workflows have become more predictable, reducing the friction that long-sidelined institutional borrowers, according to analysis from real estate finance firm Walker & Dunlop.

"HUD is not a fallback option. It is increasingly the most strategic one," Ken Buchanan, executive vice president of Federal Housing Administration finance at Walker & Dunlop, said in a statement. The FHA operates within HUD.

That shift is already translating into large, high‑profile transactions. This week, Walker & Dunlop said it arranged $130 million in HUD financing for the redevelopment of a historic former Veterans Affairs hospital campus in Denver into a 493‑unit mixed‑use apartment complex.

Among the proposed changes, HUD plans to reduce vacancy assumptions to 5%, lift large‑loan constraints, streamline technical reviews and scale back certain environmental diligence requirements — moves that lower costs and increase proceeds, Walker & Dunlop said.

Perhaps the most consequential change is HUD's decision to support units priced at up to 120% of area median income, pushing the program squarely into the workforce and middle‑income housing segment — the fastest‑growing and most supply‑constrained portion of the rental market.

The metropolitan areas hiring the most new graduates are also the ones building apartments the fastest.

When pairing payroll data with apartment construction, a trend emerges: Many of the strongest early‑career job markets are also delivering housing at a pace that helps sustain affordability.

Posting the fastest apartment inventory growth among ADP’s top markets are Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, each expanding supply by roughly 22% to 23% between 2023 and 2025.

By contrast, coastal job centers that also rank highly, including New York, San Francisco and San Jose, California, expanded apartment supply more slowly. New York completed more than 84,000 units over the past three years, but with such a large market that amounted to inventory growth of only 6%. San Francisco and San Jose posted inventory gains below 5%, reinforcing affordability pressures despite strong wages and deep labor markets.

This supply-demand imbalance has seen these three areas among the leaders in rent growth. A CoStar analysis found that U.S. apartment rents rose just 0.2% on average last month for the weakest April since 2014, but San Francisco and San Jose had the largest April rent gains of all major areas, while New York just outpaced the national average.

Multifamily rent trends across Dallas–Fort Worth remain subdued overall, though the latest daily asking rent data through April 2026 reveal a widening performance gap between urban locations like Uptown and suburban submarkets, where substantial supply-side pressure persists.

In Uptown–Park Cities, rent performance has held up relatively well compared with the broader metropolitan area. Based on data from the daily asking rent series, rents are up 4.4% since 2023, when the broader market first reported negative growth. Uptown is among the few submarkets that have consistently notched rent gains over the current cycle.

Supply is principally responsible for this divergence in rent growth performance. Since 2023, builders have grown the existing stock in Dallas-Fort Worth by 13%. In Uptown-Park Cities, that growth is just 5%, while Frisco-Little Elm has expanded by 21%.