Apartment Rents Unchanged in December

Nashville’s decline in occupancy rates and percentage of new apartment deliveries were the highest in the nation for 2017.

SANTA BARBARA, CA—Multifamily rents averaged $1,359 per month nationally at year’s end, the same dollar amount that Yardi Matrix’s monthly survey of 121 markets reported for November. On a year-over-year basis, rents in December were up 2.5%, an increase of 20 basis points from the previous month.

Although that’s a solid gain, it’s also the smallest annual increase recorded by Yardi Matrix since 2010, when annual rents fell 0.4%. Since then, rents have posted Y-O-Y gains of at least 3.3% per year—peaking at 5.4% in 2015—until 2017 broke the streak. Rents were down 0.3% for the fourth quarter, only the second quarter of negative growth since Q2 ’10.