Has Multifamily Reached an Inflection Point?

NEW YORK CITY—Call it a ripple rather than a storm surge, yet Reis is seeing apartment vacancy tick upward ever so slightly. “It appears as if the market has finally reached its inflection point during the third quarter,” says Ryan Severino, the firm’s senior economist and director of research, who predicts a faster upward pace in the coming months.

Q3 saw nationwide vacancy inch upward by 10 basis points to 4.3%, thanks to construction slightly outpacing net absorption, according to Reis data released Friday. That represented “a slight acceleration of a trend” that began in Q2 2014, although the uptick was followed by a slight decline in vacancy earlier this year.