Apartment Developer Asks, “Can We Just Wake Up As a Region?”
Date Posted: September 29, 2025
Posted In: Discussion, Regionalism, What we are thinking about,
by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum
This could, and should, be a golden moment for multifamily housing in the St. Louis Region… that is if we can stay out of own way.
That message was delivered by a discussion panel last Wednesday (Sept. 24th). The discussion took place at a real estate summit hosted by REJournal at the Frontenac Hilton. About 150 persons were registered for the morning event.
The ReJournal program included a panel on multifamily/apartments, a St. Louis market sector update, and a discussion of potential game changers in the Downtown and suburban markets.
John Morrissey, Jr., vice president, Broadmoor Group, moderated the panel on multifamily/apartments.
Other panelists were Bobby Mills, managing director, GREA; Dominic Martinez, managing director, Northmarq; Kyle Howerton, co-founder and principal, AHM Group; Matt Bukhstaber. vice chairman investment properties, CBRE; and Tom Kaiman, founder, Mia Rose Holdings.
Purpose-Driven Deals
The stability of the St. Louis market is enticing to outside capital, AHM’s Howerton said. Recently AHM purchased Chroma and Hue apartments in The Grove for a little over $88M. Howerton said that an outside institutional equity investor was brought into the deal to help close the financing for the Chroma/Hue purchase.
“They’re the opportunistic investment arm of a property/casualty insurance company. We said, ‘So why did you come into this new market on a deal with a new sponsor?'” He said that the investors told him that their focus has shifted from a market view (“Hey, this guy has a parcel of land in Nashville, let’s put something on it.”) to a property- and purpose-driven approach that focuses on the return from the individual property.
“Every Deal on One Hand”
The panel observed that demand is shifting to the Midwest. Bukhstaber noted that the number of new apartment deals in the St. Louis Metro is very low – particularly compared to markets like Austin, TX, where 45,000 apartments came online in a one-year period, or Nashville where landlords are making three-month rent concessions on new apartments.
“I can literally count every deal that’s under construction pretty much on one hand,” he said.
The stability of the market and lower availability of housing here is counterbalanced in the investment community by the difficulty of getting deals done because of political and regulatory difficulties, the panelists generally agreed.
“It’s Just So Hard”
Kaiman said that Mia Rose develops “affordable” housing, not in the sense that their projects are tax subsidized, but because they focus on demand, locations, and deals that make it possible to come to market with a lower rental rate.
Mia Rose’s portfolio includes development activity in Northwest Arkansas, Indianapolis, and South Suburban Texas. Kaiman said that he and his investors are dedicated to the St. Louis Region, but added: “The reality is that it’s so hard to get a project done. Municipalities are so difficult to work Utilities are so difficult. St. Louis just does not have the ability to turn the spigot on and say, ‘OK let’s add some affordable housing.’ It just doesn’t work like that. We’re not set up as a region to support that.”
He noted that after Mia Rose completed two successful projects in Dardenne Prairie the City imposed a moratorium on new multifamily. Kaiman waggishly told the audience that he had called the mayor and thanked him for sustaining Mia Rose’s rent base.
Kaiman said that it took him three years to bring a project that straddles the St. Louis County/Fenton boundaries to groundbreaking. “What are we doing here? Can we just wake up as a region?,” Kaiman asked to applause from the audience.
“Just imagine if St. Louis could turn on the spigot from a business perspective.”