After Analyzing the Largest Rental Markets—Here’s Where Prices Could Fall

Vacancy rates clearly have an impact on rents. When there are more rental units available in a given market, landlords have to compete to gain tenants, such as offering concessions. Even if a landlord doesn’t lower rents outright, offering just one month for free lowers the effective rent for a given unit.

So which markets are currently seeing a decline in effective rents, and which are currently experiencing high vacancy? Finally, which markets are likely to see higher vacancy in the future, which could mean future rent declines?

30 Markets Where Rents Are Declining

By using rental data from CoStar and only keeping markets with more than 25,000 rental units, we are able to track the cities with the lowest 12-month change in rents.

Fort Myers, Florida; Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, North Carolina, have the highest declines in effective rent. Also, notice how most of the pandemic boomtowns have also seen a decrease, such as:

• Phoenix, Arizona (-2.25%)
• Tampa, Florida (-1.79%)
• Charlotte, North Carolina (-1.72%)
• Dallas, Texas (-1.43%)
• Atlanta, Georgia (-1.36%)

Now, let’s look at vacancy rates.

Top 30 Markets with the Highest Vacancy Rates

Vacancy rates are related to rent declines. So let’s look at the markets with the highest vacancies, and plot their changes in rent beside them.

As you can see, just because a city is experiencing high multifamily vacancy doesn’t mean it’s also experiencing a decline in rents. Jackson, Mississippi; Oklahoma City; and Houston are cases in point.

However, what do those cities have in common? They are relatively affordable compared to their pandemic boomtown counterparts. Almost every other city on the list had small rent growth or rent declines.

Top 30 Markets With the Most Rental Units Under Construction

And what do the cities with high vacancies and decreased rents have in common? New supply.

As more rental units complete construction and come online, landlords will have greater competition to place tenants in their vacant properties, which can drive effective rents down. So let’s take a look at the top 30 markets with the highest percent of new units currently under construction.

Many of these markets were included on the charts displaying the cities with the highest rent decline and vacancy rates. It should be no surprise that new supply is related to these market variables.

Another thing to note: This chart details new units under construction. That means these new units aren’t even on the market yet. Once the new units come online, these cities may continue to experience downward pressure on effective rents—at least in the short term. (But not in the long term. Keep reading; I’ll cover this at the end.)

Is there a measurement for how strongly new rental unit construction is related to an increase or decrease in effective rents? It turns out there is.

How Much Does New Supply Impact Future Rents?

In statistics, there is a measurement called the correlation coefficient. This is a measure of the relationship between two variables, such as new construction and median rent. Values closer to -1 indicate a negative relationship: If construction rises, median rents may fall. 

Values close to 0 indicate little to no relationship, and values closer to 1 indicate a positive relationship: Over a long period of time, if construction rises, median rents may also rise.

I’ve measured the correlation between new construction and median rent for all markets with more than 25,000 units (and leaves smaller markets out of this analysis). Notice how, when we measure from 2021 onward, we get a negative correlation for the top markets:

The lower the correlation (the closer to -1 the values are), the more likely it is that additional new supply will put downward pressure on rents.

For example, it’s highly likely that if metros such as Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Denver continue delivering new supply, their effective median rent will continue to decline.

But how true is this in the long term? I decided to run the same analysis, but this time including data all the way from the beginning of the new millennium. Here is the correlation for each market from 2000-2024:

Over the past 24 years, additional units under construction actually had a positive relationship with rents, which means if supply goes up over time, median rents are likely to go up as well.

According to the data, it looks like the top five markets with the strongest supply-to-rent growth relationship are:

1. Springfield, Missouri
2. Asheville, North Carolina
3. Nashville, Tennessee
4. Dallas, Texas
5. Charlotte, North Carolina

Why is this the case? My opinion is that growth of supply indicates investors and builders expect demand to increase for a given market. If supply follows demand, new construction is likely a lagging indicator of city growth.

Cities with a strong long-term relationship between supply growth and rent increases may be excellent places to invest, even if they are experiencing rent declines in the short term.

What Does This All Mean for Real Estate Investors?

In the short term, a glut of new supply will undoubtedly put downward pressure on rents. If you’re considering an investment in these cities, I wouldn’t expect growth in rents anytime soon:

1. Fort Myers, Florida
2. Miami, Florida
3. Sarasota, Florida

The ultra-conservative investor may want to include rent declines in their near-term pro formas. 

However, as we saw, an increase in supply is also an optimistic sign that there is more growth expected in the long term for these markets.

Please let me know if you disagree with anything in the article. I’d be happy to have a discussion and possibly learn something from your point of view.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.