Latest Data and Execs Tell Different Stories for Apartments

WASHINGTON, DC-Despite reports of improvement from industry professionals, it appears that conditions in the greater multifamily market are continuing to deteriorate. The US Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau recently announced that the national vacancy rate for rental properties has reached a record high of 11.1%, or 4.59-million units, at the end of the third quarter. That figure is 50 basis points over the second quarter rate and 9.9% higher than Q3 2008.

Of all the housing units in the US, renter-occupied residences accounted for 27.7%. While vacant housing units comprised 14.5% of the country’s total housing inventory, units on the market for rent accounted for just 3.5% of the whole. By comparison, the national homeownership vacancy, at 2.6% in Q3, ticked down by 20 basis points over the past year, but remained relatively flat quarter-over-quarter.

Despite the tendency to concentrate apartments around metropolitan centers, the vacancy rate for rental units in major US cities was the same as the vacancy rate across national suburban markets, both at 11.2% in the third quarter. The rate outside of metropolitan statistical areas came in at 10.6%. Regionally, rental properties in the South tended to have the highest vacancies, 14.2% on average, whereas those in the Northeast were the lowest, at 7.5%.