The US apartment market capped off 2024 with a seventh straight quarter of record supply. In addition, the nation hit a 50-year high in supply for the year. The market logged especially significant deliveries during the last three quarters of the year, according to a RealPage analysis of the apartment market.
The supply trend began during the second quarter of 2023 when quarterly completion volumes broke the 100,000-unit mark, and since then, delivery totals have increased nearly every quarter, the firm said. During the third quarter of 2024, more than 160,400 units were completed, and an additional 155,400 units wrapped up in the fourth quarter.
“The completion volumes from these last two quarters of 2024 nearly doubled the 10-year quarterly supply average of about 89,700 units,” said the analysis. “And this decade has been a significant one for apartment construction activity. In the decade before this one (2004-2014), quarterly completions averaged just 36,200 units.”
New supply has been significant in the South, with more than 89,100 units completed in the region during the final three months of 2024, said RealPage. Supply has also ticked up in the West, with more than 26,100 units delivered during Q4 2024. Q4 activity in both regions barely fell short of record-high supply during the third quarter.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest and Northeast, deliveries were milder, with 15,500 and 14,600 units respectively during the fourth quarter, according to the report. But that represented a record showing for the Northeast region. The Midwest’s supply pace was slightly behind its record quarterly tally a year earlier.
Dallas, Austin and Phoenix had the most new deliveries during the fourth quarter, each completing more than 8,000 units, leading to nation-leading annual delivery volumes topping 26,000 units in calendar 2024.