Why is the US building so many apartments right now? What will that mean for rents?

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by lixnuts90

23 comments

  1. More apartments = more housing = more affordability

    We are so far behind that we won’t see prices drop for a while, but new stock is reducing the rate that rent is increasing

  2. Yup. Lotsa luxury buildings going in where I live. A lot near 50% vacancy for 2 + years.

    Everyone is just waiting for the trickle down.

  4. People can’t buy a house, so they have to rent, there is a lot of demand. Might overbuild luxury apartments as a result.

  5. I wonder how much California alone is contributing to this. Not only is it the largest state, but the state government is requiring municipalities to build multi-family housing. These types of dwellings are going up all over the state now

  6. As the chart shows, housing starts have dropped for fifty years. Meanwhile the US population has nearly doubled, and most of this growth has gone into a few big metros in a handful of states, where most good jobs now reside.

    Add the climate crisis and the need to concentrate more people in low-polluting, walkable, bikable, transit-served neighborhoods, and more new housing’s coming up multifamily.

  7. Define “so many”

    Do you know that population in the 70s and 80s was far less than today? Do you see that were still building less than the 70s 80s ? That means per capita there isnt “so many” apartments considering the under building from 90s-20s

  8. Should mean that rents will stabilize with more inventory

  9. Rich folks are cashing in on the fact that you can’t buy a house right now. They hope it never becomes affordable.

  13. Quantity over quality builds, too- there will need to be repairs and upgrades on cheap work that the renters will be paying for with increases.

  14. And since birth rates are low (backfill for baby boomers dying off ) we will see a drop in demand that will reduce home prices and leave many apartments vacant.

  15. A lot of apartments being around my area, with vacancy rates already high around 12% and a lot of inventory coming into the market in the next 2 years. This had led to aparment complex stop raising rents for the past 3 years (according to peers), and I belive they will even be lowered once more inventory finishes development. Overall seems good for the consumer, bad for developers as it looks like they over build, hopefully some developers go under, and the apartments get sold as individual units instead of just rented out.

  16. They earn a lot more money in the long run.

    I don’t know how Harris thinks any government incentive to build homes will be bigger than what developers can rake in with apartments and condos.

  18. The industry is completing apartment constructions that all started when rates are low during Covid. The construction starts are in the gutter. This is a very big distinction that must be made.

  20. I see a ton of these. It’s a good thing, but rents are only going down marginally even with these high vacancy rates. Lots of 1 month free concessions out there. 

  21. Build baby build 📉 The cure for high prices… are high prices. Pray to God Kamala doesn’t fuck it up with price controls, that will only screw us regular Americans even more by exacerbating the shortage. We need free markets to play themselves out. We need people to take the risk, build, overbuild, go bust, repeat the cycle.

  22. Rents will *always* go up as long as the US continues to tolerate monopolistic behavior by wealthy owners.

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