New York’s Multifamily Permitting Surged in 2024

While most markets nationwide saw declines in multifamily permit volumes in calendar 2024, New York logged a big jump. New York tends to rank as the market leader for nationwide permitting, but this recent surge pushed the market notably ahead of other locales.

Annual multifamily permits in the New York-White Plains metro division shot up by 77% in 2024 to 37,406 units for an increase of 16,268 units, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, the majority of RealPage’s top 150 markets had annual declines in their multifamily permit totals compared to 2023. Ninety-one of the top 150 metro markets had decreases ranging from a negligible 0.3% in Seattle to declines of 50% to 60% in such markets as Indianapolis, San Jose, Salt Lake City and Riverside.

Additionally, only six markets permitted 10,000 or more multifamily units in 2024 compared to 13 markets in 2023.

Nine of the top 10 markets from November’s list returned in December with six markets remaining in order.

After New York, Austin continues to be a leader for multifamily construction, but their momentum is slowing with a decrease of almost 30% from December 2023. Dallas moved up from #5 last month to #3 in December with a month-over-month increase of 1,658 units, but their 2024 total of 14,257 units is down almost 3,100 units from 2023.

Atlanta was almost unchanged from last year and remained in the #4 spot again, while Phoenix dropped to #5 and had the second-deepest decrease in units permitted from last year among the top 10 after Austin.

Houston, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Fort Worth remained in their previous spots from November’s top 10 list, and each had 20% to 30% decreases in annual permitting, with the exception of Fort Worth, which jumped 81% from last year to 8,665 units.

Seattle moved up from #13 to #10 on December’s top 10 list with 8,611 units permitted, almost the same as last year but up 507 units from November’s 12-month total.

In addition to New York and Fort Worth, other markets with significant year-over-year increases in annual multifamily permitting in calendar 2024 were Chicago (+1,872 units), Omaha (+1,667 units), Columbus (+1,400 units), Ashville, NC (+1,326 units) and Milwaukee (+1,213 units).

Markets with significant declines in multifamily permitting outside of the top 10 markets include Raleigh/Durham (-5,820 units), Jacksonville (-5,661 units), Denver (-4,867 units), Minneapolis/St. Paul (-4,653 units), Riverside (-4,317 units) and Nashville (-4,213 units). Nine other non-top 10 markets had decreases in permitting of 2,000 to 4,000 units.

Below the metro level, eight of last month’s top 10 permit-issuing places returned to this month’s list with five remaining in the same place. The list of top individual permitting places (cities, towns, boroughs and unincorporated counties) generally include the principal city of some of the most active metro areas.

The borough of Brooklyn and the city of Austin returned to the first two permitting spots in December but permitting decreased from November’s total in Austin and increased in Brooklyn, (by almost 1,100 units). The city of Atlanta had a month-over-month increase of about 1,000 units, moving to the #3 spot, while the Bronx borough remained in the #4 spot and the city of Los Angeles moved down to #5.

The cities of Fort Worth and Miami remained in their previous spots at #6 and #7 with only minor increases in permitting compared to last month. Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County moved up one spot but also had a very minor increase in units permitted for the month. The city of Columbus, OH experienced an increase of 10% in multifamily permitting from their November total to 5,115 units, while the city of San Diego jumped 5% to 5,108 units permitted.

Although the metros of Dallas and Houston made the top 10 list, their individual permitting places are slowing, with the cities of Houston and Dallas falling to #18 and #19, respectively and Unincorporated Harris County at #15. Unincorporated Travis County has also moved out of the top 10 permitting places list to #14 in December.

This post is part of a series by RealPage Senior Real Estate Economist Chuck Ehmann analyzing residential permits and starts data from the U.S. Census Bureau. For more on this data, read previous posts in the Permits series.