Multifamily developers can extract a rent premium from their residents by building an upscale grocery store into an apartment project, or replacing an aging supermarket with new multifamily housing that includes the rebuilt and updated grocery on the ground floor, according to the real estate consulting firm RCLCO.

"Apartment communities with a Whole Foods on the ground floor achieve, on average, a rental rate premium of 6%" compared to similar communities nearby, an analysis by RCLCO calculated. For a Trader Joe's on the ground floor, the average premium was 5.6%. Other high-end grocers like Sprouts, Harris Teeter, Fairway and Safeway yielded premiums of 5.2% in 2023, up from 3.3% in 2020.

"These premiums have held relatively consistent over the past years in the face of a tumultuous multifamily market, where skyrocketing rents in 2021 yielded to flat or declining rents in 2023," the company stated.