Embracing Disruption: The Apartment of the Future

As stewards of the multifamily housing industry, we each have visions for the apartment of the future. Some may see it as a techno-eccentric unit, a place in a world unto itself that stimulates the imagination and promotes self-indulgence in urban playgrounds. Others could argue it supports sophistication, lifestyle and basic essentials and redefines the old real estate axiom of location, location, location. Talk to any developer or apartment operator and they’ll agree that the shape of multifamily now is likely to morph into something far beyond the traditional, even by today’s standards. But exactly what shape that will take is an unknown. Today’s multifamily has transformed into something unlike what multifamily forefathers who lorded over the first apartment in ancient Rome ever imagined. And with a diverse stable of renters living in a world where lifestyles and processes change as quickly as a YouTube video goes viral, trying to imagine the apartment of the future is no easy proposition. People believe that home is a reflection of their identity The National Multifamily Housing Council has a vision of what apartments may look like 25 years from now. In “Disruption,” NMHC shares what it believes will be the way that industry must house a renter population that is destined to grow by 2030 when 4.6 million more apartments will be needed just to keep up. Multifamily operators, says the report released in January, will find themselves in front of a mixing bowl tossing in ingredients like technology, personalization, demographic and household formations, employment, transportation, shopping habits, health and spaces to come up with the right brew. The upheaval of all things once considered the norm to multifamily operators is not only requiring a new recipe but perhaps the cooking process as a whole. “If you look at other industries in real estate—office, hospitality, retail, and you’re starting to see restauran...