Apartment occupancy in Knoxville has remained above 97% for the past four months. In October 2020, occupancy registered at 97.4%. Similar to national trends, Knoxville recorded a surge in demand over the past few months. In turn, occupancy in Knoxville tightened 40 basis points (bps) year-over-year and stood 170 bps above the national average (95.7%) as of October. Knoxville’s smaller size adds a degree of volatility to occupancy trends. However, the market has remained essentially full over much of the past five years and has generally outperformed the U.S. average during that period. Knoxville’s October 2020 occupancy rate was the tightest among the South region’s 19 key secondary markets and ranked 29th across the core 150 markets nationally. Despite Knoxville’s tight occupancy over the past five years, effective asking rents only increased an average of 3.6% annually during that period. Still, that was right in line with the market’s five-year average and better than the national norm (2.8%).
