Apartment Vacancies Hit Record Highs
Continue Reading Add comment July 8th, 2009
You’d expect with job losses rising and so many Americans losing homes to foreclosure, rental buildings would be filling up with folks who can no longer afford to be homeowners. Instead apartment vacancies in the second quarter rose to 7.5% — the highest percentage for that period in 22 years, according to today’s apartment market report from Reis.
It seems that people are moving in with friends and family, or are finding roommates.
Effective rents, which include concessions, fell 1.9% from a year earlier and 0.9% from the previous quarter.
Spring is normally a good time for landlords to find new tenants, so the vacancy increase is particularly distressing for apartment owners.
San Jose, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Orange County, and Seattle had the worst effective rent drops for the quarter, according to Reis. Birmingham, Chattanooga, Louisville, Norfolk, and Syracuse had the highest rent increases.