Evalee Apartments Bethel Park Leasing Analysis

Occupancy has recovered — 93.4% now versus an 85.3% trough in May — and the rent story is a positioning story, not a pricing miss: the 26% 2BR discount to the submarket shrinks to 13% on a per-square-foot, age-restricted-adjusted basis.

Occupancy bottomed in May at 85.3% with 47 vacant units, then the property leased 68 units across June–August and cut vacancy to 24. Net of that round trip, occupancy is up 1.9 points over six months — recovery, not growth, and the recovery was bought with time on market: median days-on-market for leases signed in the last 30 days is 92 days against 69 for the Bethel Park submarket . New leases are trading essentially flat to the prior resident (+0.1%) while the submarket is capturing +1.8% . Retention is the deeper problem: 60.6% against 73.8% submarket, or 126 turnovers in twelve months at a 320-unit property . At 92-day DOM, that churn rate is what put the property at 85% in May, and it will do it again next spring absent a renewal push.

Metric			Gap %	Evalee $/SF	Submarket $/SF	Gap % per SF
One-bedroom
1BR asking	$1,18112	$1,374	-14.0%	$1.82	$2.01	-9.5%
1BR in-place	$1,190	$1,538	-22.6%	$1.84	$2.14	-14.0%
Two-bedroom
2BR asking	$1,3812	$1,880	-26.6%	$1.61	$1.86	-13.4%
2BR in-place	$1,420	$1,849	-23.2%	$1.57	$1.81	-13.3%

The 2BR headline gap of 26.6% on asking rent is the number to be careful with : half of it is square footage — the subject's 2BRs average roughly 857 SF against about 1,011 SF in the comparable set — and the rest sits inside an age-restricted product priced against unrestricted conventional apartments. On a per-SF basis both unit types run 9–14% under the submarket , which is a defensible senior-housing positioning rather than a pricing error. The 1BR is the tighter of the two: a 9.5% per-SF discount on asking, and 1BRs are where the submarket's leasing volume and pricing power actually are (27 of 56 submarket leases in August, with +4.8% tradeout on 1BRs versus -1.0% on 2BRs).

Where the discount does become actionable is in-place rent, not asking. Asking is only 0.8% under in-place on the 1BR while the submarket asks 10% under its in-place book — meaning the subject's rent roll has not been marked up through turnover the way the market's has. Holding the senior discount constant and capturing even a quarter of the $379 blended in-place gap is about $363,000 a year at 320 units ; the full gap is $1.45M, which is a measure of the spread, not a target.

Where area rents go from here: flat. The submarket 1BR asking-rent base case is +1.6% in year one and +6.1% cumulatively over two years, at medium confidence — the engine flagged peer mismatch suspected: the subject's growth deviates 3.2 sigma from the peer cohort (threshold 3), which usually means the peer is a poor reversion target, so treat that path as directional . The 2BR base case is -1.5% in year one then held flat, at low confidence, with a cyclical drawdown suspected flag: history is 25 months and the trailing trend is negative, so the engine held flat rather than extrapolating the correction and warns against using it as a multi-year assumption without structural judgment . Supply, migration and employment signals came back unknown for this read. Structurally the market backdrop is neutral rather than threatening: 2,061 units under construction and 6.5% metro vacancy, with absorption (765 units) roughly matching YTD deliveries (846).

The call: do not chase the submarket 2BR number. Push renewals on the 1BR book, where you are 9.5% under market per SF and the market is still trading up, and spend the next two quarters on retention — a 60.6% renewal rate at 92-day DOM costs more than the rent you would gain by holding the line on price. What would change this read: a rent roll with lease-end dates would turn the blended gap into a dated capture schedule, and a Box Score would tell you whether the 92-day DOM is traffic or conversion.