MIAMI—Active investors offered their take on the multifamily markets to watch in the East Coast at Real Share Apartments East in Miami last week. Panelists offered heat maps showing the hotbeds of multifamily activity and where interest has cooled, along with what's next in investment, where smart investors are looking and what new opportunities will arise in the year ahead.

Adam Petriella, executive vice president of Coldwell Banker Alliance, moderated the panel called “Heat Mapping the Coast: Investment in Degrees.” He was joined by panelists John Bezzant, executive vice president and CIO of AIMCO and Still Hunter, senior director at Institutional Property Advisors, and Michael Anderson, chairman at Real Source.

“One key factor most economists will all agree is employment,” Anderson told the over 250 RealShare attendeeds. “You can have population growth. You can have a high degree of birth rate and household formations but if they are not employed they are not renting from you. Employment is becoming a very important factor.”

Employment is indeed vital, especially considering Anderson's next revelation: It's taking two or three people with lower paying jobs to qualify for leases at his firm's properties—and his units aren't high-dollar rentals. Of course, that's not the only issue multifamily developers are facing.

“Permits have become a situation where we have to pay a lot more attention,” Anderson said. “There is a lot of permit activity. To us that's the onslaught of competition in the market. At some point you know we are going to continue to build to the point that we are going to put ourselves on the bubble.”

The good news for developers eyeing South Florida is this: Anderson said Miami is showing some degree of restraint on the multifamily development front. What's more, he said, Miami is also bringing in wealth from outside the area through retirement funds.

In the last point in the first half of the panel, Anderson addressed the affordability issue. “For us, this gets down to yes, we are creating jobs and jobs are a major factor but are they the type of jobs that will allow these people to rent?” Anderson said. “There are usually two or two signers on a lease and that is a lot of economic necessity. It's one of the factors we look at very closely.”

Stay tuned for more insight from other experts on this panel in a follow up story.