The rent roll read top notch.

Renewals up across the board. Occupancy read fine. On paper, the asking rents were being absorbed.

We went under contract, and the vacant units started leasing.

Not at the renewal rents. At the bottom of the roll. One after another, week after week, while we sat in diligence and watched it happen.

That spread told the story. The increases went out to existing tenants months before we saw the deal. Some renewed, and those are the rents on the roll. Others moved out, and their units went back to the market, where the market priced them lower. The roll showed the rents that survived. It did not show what the next lease would come in at.

The lender read the same file. Income sized lower. The structure we priced the deal on was not the structure on offer.

Apartment supply is running ahead of demand right now.

Deals still get done in this market. They take longer and they take more back-and-forth.

What the property has done is real. Those renewals were collected. What the property is doing now is also real, and the new leases are the market's current answer.

Neither number tells the whole story. Every one of those higher renewals eventually rolls, and when it does it will meet the same market the vacant units just met.

A seller is entitled to value what the property has proven. A buyer is entitled to price what comes next what the lender says. Both readings are defensible, and the gap usually closes once both sides look at the other one.

For context, this was in Columbus, Ohio, garden-style multifamily. I broker here and hold my own units, so this one hit from both sides.  Requesting and checking leasing updates is what made this visible while there was still time to do something about it.