Apartment Completions Shift Downward

Possibly benefiting from a slowdown in new deliveries, Seattle led the US for trailing three-month apartment rent growth.

SANTA BARBARA, CA—Completions of new apartment builds have slowed this year, and so have annual rent gains, according to the August Yardi Matrix report, issued Thursday. Multifamily operators eked out an average $1 increase in rents this month, bringing the national average across 121 markets to $1,352 and maintaining a streak of monthly rent gains during 2017.

Year-over-year rent growth nationally was 2.4% in August, a drop of 20 basis points from the previous month. Trailing 12-month growth for the month was 3.1%, down 10 bps compared to July. As for deliveries, Yardi Matrix notes that fewer than 10,000 new units came on line in July and August, compared with the average monthly delivery of 14,500 in the year’s first quarter—itself a deceleration of the delivery velocity seen in 2016.