Rent and Operating Trends Week of July 12th 2020

Radix

Radix

Radix Blog Posts 1

Share This Post

Recently, we’ve seen several positive signs indicating that the apartment industry had shaken off the worst impact of the pandemic and was headed in the direction of a recovery.

 

Unfortunately, that forward momentum wasn’t present during the seven-day period ending on July 12, according to data from Radix.

 

Traffic and leases were down for a second straight week in most metropolitan statistical areas (MSA), and the national occupancy and leased-percentage rates took noticeable week-over-week dips.

 

The resurgence of new coronavirus cases in many MSAs and the resulting partial shutdowns in lots of those areas are certainly part of the explanation. Still, it is too early to draw sweeping conclusions about what the rest of the summer and the early part of the fall will look like. At Radix, we will continue to monitor the leading indicators (traffic and leases) for any signs of a deepening downward trend, which would invariably impact occupancy and leased percentage within weeks if the trend continues.

 

Below are some of the specific takeaways from the week ending on July 12:

 

  • Nationally, traffic and lease were down pretty significantly WoW, suffering dips of 8.5% and 11.1%, respectively. This is one of the steepest WoW declines for the two metrics since the very early stages of the pandemic in March. On a national basis, both metrics had closed their year-over-year gaps quite a bit in recent weeks. However, if precipitous WoW declines continue, then we are likely to see those YoY gaps widen once again.

 

  • The national occupancy rate stood at 93.52%. That’s a WoW drop of 10 basis points and a YoY decline of 1.0%. Meanwhile, the national leased-percentage rate was 95.03%; that represented a decline of 10 basis points from one week earlier and a dip of 0.8% from the same time last year. If traffic and leases continue declining at an accelerated pace like they did in the week of July 12, we are likely to see occupancy and leased percentage dropping faster in two to three weeks as well.

 

  • At $1,667, the national net effective rent was the same as the week before and was down 7.7% YoY. The largest YoY declines were in Houston (-13.4%) and San Jose, Calif. (-13.3%). Only three of the 21 MSAs tracked by Radix experienced YoY increases: Riverside, Calif. (+3.5%), San Antonio (+2.8%) and Tampa (+0.1%).

 

About the author

More To Explore

RAOT Blog rd December
Research

Rent and Operating Trends – Week of December 3rd 2023

The U.S. economy was given another boost last week as Q3 GDP was revised upward to an annualized rate of 5.2%, making the rate of growth last quarter more than double the rate for the first half of this year. Q3 was also the strongest quarter for economic growth since 2021 when the U.S. economy was still working through the volatile declines and subsequent growth resulting from COVID-19.

Chart of the Week Blog December th
Research

Chart of The Week – December 4th 2023

Higher borrowing costs and construction costs have hurt the development market throughout 2023. The historically high levels of current construction have also led to a major slowdown in new projects breaking ground. Developers are now cancelling projects at a steady clip nationwide.

Rent and Operating
Discover weekly multifamily industry insights! Subscribe below to the Rent and Operating Trends Report newsletter.