Waco Apartment Market Shows Significant Progress

After a relatively stable performance throughout much of the past decade, Waco’s apartment market saw fundamentals surge recently, just like so many other markets across the country. As of November, occupancy in Waco climbed to 98.3%. This was well ahead of this market’s performance over the course of the past decade when a rate of 94% to 95% was the norm. Waco occupancy generally runs about 70 to 100 basis points (bps) behind the national average. Recent growth, however, has taken occupancy in this small Texas market 80 bps ahead of the U.S. norm. With such a strong occupancy performance of late, operators have been pushing rents. Effective asking prices were up 11.8% in the year-ending November. While this performance fell short of the U.S. growth rate of 13.9%, Waco’s recent pace was quite significant progress over the market’s decade average of around 3%.