U.S. Apartment Market Sees Negligible Change in August

Stability continued to be the key storyline in the U.S. apartment market in August.

U.S. apartment occupancy remained stable at 94.1% in August, marking the 10th consecutive month of occupancy straying no more than 10 bps in either direction. In fact, the difference between July (94.16%) and August (94.13%) looks to be incorrect when viewing the data on a chart because the 0-basis point (bps) change was rounded up from -0.03. This proves the point that the market is so incredibly stable, it takes a rounding adjustment to notice the difference between monthly performances.

Mild downward shifts at the end of 2023 kept August 2024 occupancy 40 bps below the August 2023 figure, according to data from RealPage Market Analytics. 

Rent change also remained stable for the month of August, keeping year-over-year growth modest at just 0.4%. This was well behind the nation’s decade average. In fact, annual rent growth has remained very mild – at no more than 0.4% – for the past 13 consecutive months.

The Midwest and Northeast remained the nation’s best rent growth performers, with prices growing 2.9% and 2.7%, respectively, in the year-ending August. Among the nation’s 50 largest apartment markets, leading the charge for rent growth in the past year were Milwaukee, Washington, DC and Kansas City, where price increases were between 3.4% and 3.6%.

On the other hand, Austin continued to drag behind the rest of the nation in August, with a deep rent cut of more than 8% in the past year. This was nearly double the rent cuts seen across other major markets nationwide.

In fact, most of the markets losing the most pricing traction in August were located in the South region of the country, with the exception of Phoenix in the West.

While U.S. apartment revenues aren’t growing again just yet, they are at least stable. Year-over-year revenue change has been 0% for two consecutive months now, stemming off the 13 consecutive months of annual revenue loss that came before that.

Apartment markets with revenue growth of 3% or more in the past year were Detroit, Washington, DC, Richmond and Virginia Beach.