Rent Growth in Smaller Apartment Markets Outperforms Larger Metros

As rent growth has cooled nationwide recently, smaller apartment markets have maintained a stronger performance. This is a typical pattern, as smaller markets don’t boast as strong an upside as larger markets in good times – but they also don’t get hit quite as hard as the bigger markets when times are hard. The nation’s largest 50 apartment markets (not counting New York, which is excluded due to an outsized weighted average) logged average effective asking rent cuts of 0.1% in calendar 2023, according to data from RealPage Market Analytics. Meanwhile, the next largest 100 apartment markets – with an existing unit count of between 20,000 and 110,000 units – managed to hold onto rent growth of 1.6%. One caveat, however, is that because there’s such a big range of sizes among these smaller individual markets, differences in performance can differ more than big markets, despite overall numbers showing less volatility.

For more information on the state of the nation’s smaller apartment markets, including forecasts, watch the webcast Market Intelligence: Q1 Small Markets Update.