SANTA BARBARA, CA—Apartment rents held steady in November while decreasing slightly from the previous month for all unit sizes, RentCafe reported Wednesday. On a market level, the fastest year-over-year growth is occurring in small and medium-sized cities, while some of the more volatile metro areas are stabilizing.

November's average monthly rent of $1.358 is just 2.5% higher Y-O-Y, according to Yardi Matrix data cited by RentCafe. Eighty-three percent of the nation's biggest cities saw annual rent increases, with just 3% of metro areas seeing Y-O-Y rent drops.

Among these experiencing declines is the country's most expensive apartment market, Manhattan in New York City, where rents dipped 1.9% from the year-ago period. However, at an average rent of $4,089 per month, Manhattan remains the front-runner by a wide margin, coming in more than $700 per month above second-place San Francisco.

Apartment rents in many large cities—including Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco and Washington, DC—increased in November by less than the national average Y-O-Y, according to RentCafe. And although representing a small percentage overall, the number of cities where rents dropped Y-O-Y was nearly twice as large as in October.

RentCafe quotes Doug Ressler, senior analyst with Yardi Matrix, on the drivers of rent prices this year and into next. “Multifamily remains the strongest sector by a variety of metrics, including investment sales volume, and analysts expect a deceleration in rent growth as the markets absorb new supply,” he says, adding that housing demographics “continue to favor renting with a continued robust delivery pipeline'

Ressler notes that Yardi-Matrix is projecting deliveries of 300,000 units by the end of this year, with 360,000 units to come in 2018. “This amount of new supply exceeds previous national levels over the past 20 years,” says Ressler. “Thirty-one percent of those new apartments will be delivered in the South Atlantic, followed by 25% in the West and 19% in the South West. The Northeast and Midwest will round it out with 14% and 12%.”

Instant Insights /

Multifamily Rents Hold Steady in November

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