Apartment Construction Is Slowing, and Investors Are Betting on Higher Rents

“Apartment developers are stepping on the brakes, especially compared with the building frenzy in the early years of the pandemic. Across the country some rental-construction projects are getting stalled, as developers struggle to obtain the financing needed to complete them. Other investors are pivoting to more lucrative alternatives.

In July, the annual pace of multifamily-building starts was down 22% from the same month a year earlier, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and down 41% from an April 2022 peak. Property-data company CoStar, which uses a different method to count starts, said they fell to less than 61,000 units in the second quarter, the lowest level in the past decade.“