Vivmark's merger drove August apartment volume; single-asset sales fell 35%

August's $80.5 billion apartment transaction volume, a 402% year-over-year jump, was almost entirely the arithmetic of one corporate combination rather than the ordinary business of selling one building to one buyer. Garden volume rose 182% to $24.4 billion and mid- and high-rise volume rose 659% to $56.2 billion, the two lines carrying essentially the whole total, which is what a merger of equals looks like inside a monthly print — Multifamily Dive attributes the spike to one deal and headlines the month as Vivmark's. Single-asset sales, meanwhile, fell 35% from a year earlier in August and sit 6% behind the first eight months of 2025, per MSCI.

The year to date splits the same way: garden volume is up 25% to $73.2 billion and mid- and high-rise volume is up 137% to $96.5 billion, even as the one-at-a-time trade trails the 2025 pace. MSCI expects the August number to be revised upward and still reads the year through August as weak, and Multifamily Dive has prices down 4.7% from a year earlier. Whatever the merger did to the monthly total, the per-asset market is repricing.

The rate picture is the obvious drag. The 10-year Treasury reached 5.11% on Sept. 24, its highest since 2007, CNN reported, and Multifamily Dive ties the slump to the recent run of rate hikes and rising yields. "Everyone is putting on a brave face, but the bond market and the impact on rates is definitely working its way into the deal market already," Jon Siegel, co-founder and chief investment officer of Bethesda, Maryland-based apartment owner RailField Partners, told the outlet in emailed comments.

The supply side is moving faster. Doug Root, co-founder and managing partner of Blackfin Real Estate Investors, told Multifamily Dive that REO product is working through the system, that sellers who once held on to get their lenders paid back have run out of road, and that lenders are taking the real estate back — inventory that is starting to become available. These are the trades that clear first, priced by whoever must transact, and they carry at the loan balance rather than at an appraisal, which is how the 322-unit Atlanta tower changed hands in September.

The apartment bid has split into an income half and a scarcity half: the value-add cohort is setting the clearing basis lower while patient capital underwrites the 2028-29 supply gap instead of buying today's assets. A 4.7% price decline and a 35% drop in single-asset sales are what that split looks like from the inside, and neither half is stepping up for a garden asset in a market where the 10-year sits above 5%. The next honest price print will come out of REO supply, and it will be lower than the last one.