The decline in the number of 18-year-olds will begin to impact student housing immediately and then the broader multifamily market in four to five years.

Commercial real estate lenders are done pretending. After years of waiting and hoping that the market would improve, they’re selling off debt on struggling US assets, sometimes writing down as much as 85% of the loan’s payoff amount.

• Lender Ready Capital Corp. offloaded a pool of loans backed by apartments in the Sunbelt at a roughly 30% discount, reducing its exposure to an overbuilt market.
• Ready Capital said in February that it aimed to dump 60% of its legacy commercial-property loan book. It told investors it’s seeking buyers for $1.5 billion of loans, with a focus on clearing non-performing and sub-yielding debt.
• Shanghai Commercial Bank sold its loan on a stalled Manhattan condo conversion at an 85% discount to the debt’s payoff amount. 

While some lenders are selling off troubled loans, others are moving faster to foreclose. In March, the balance of loans in commercial mortgage-backed securities tied to buildings in foreclosure reached $17 billion, up from $7 billion in 2024 and the highest level since the post-Great Financial Crisis resolution period, according to Trepp.

Parkview Financial recently foreclosed on a pair of apartment towers in Baltimore after the company that converted the former hotel buildings defaulted on its $45 million loan.

Source: Bloomberg

The combined total of new jobs among these top 10 markets (166,000 jobs) was almost 50% greater than their combined annual gains in February and 13.3% greater than one year ago:

On the downside, the Northeast region is facing steep job cuts with 107,900 fewer jobs for the year in Washington, DC, and significant declines in New York, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia. The Midwest region was not spared from declining employment levels as Detroit, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Toledo and Pittsburgh also reported job cuts for the year-ending March.

Unlike the top job gain markets, which tend to be large in population and employment, smaller markets usually dominate the top markets for annual percentage change in employment. 

Other top 20 large markets in the 1% to 1.1% growth range included San Diego, Dallas, Raleigh/Durham and Austin.

Source: RealPage

From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s 2026 Survey of Consumer Expectations Housing Survey in 2026:

Renters reported a 36.6% average probability of moving within the next three years, down from 57.5% in 2016.

Source: Chandon Economics

Where renters are searching:

Most affordable cities ranked:

	City	Median Household Income	Current Average One-Bedroom Rent	Rent-to-Income Ratio
1	Colorado Springs, CO	$94,742	$1,299	16.5%
2	Austin, TX	$81,906	$1,387	20.3%
3	Seattle, WA	$114,915	$2,092	21.8%
4	Raleigh, NC	$75,944	$1,383	21.9%
5	Portland, OR	$83,502	$1,521	21.9%
6	Arlington, VA	$130,144	$2,378	21.9%
7	Fort Worth, TX	$68,568	$1,270	22.2%
8	Phoenix, AZ	$70,283	$1,303	22.2%
9	Indianapolis, IN	$59,562	$1,123	22.6%
10	San Antonio, TX	$56,185	$1,072	22.9%
11	Denver, CO	$85,001	$1,622	22.9%
12	Columbus, OH	$60,250	$1,168	23.3%
13	Kansas City, MO	$64,541	$1,252	23.3%
14	Minneapolis, MN	$71,217	$1,415	23.8%
15	Sacramento, CA	$77,825	$1,566	24.1%
16	Charlotte, NC	$72,329	$1,470	24.4%
17	Las Vegas, NV	$61,425	$1,281	25.0%
18	Honolulu, HI	$82,847	$1,735	25.1%
19	San Jose, CA	$130,163	$2,731	25.2%
20	Houston, TX	$56,401	$1,184	25.2%
21	Atlanta, GA	$77,337	$1,630	25.3%
22	Madison, WI	$70,080	$1,514	25.9%
23	Jacksonville, FL	$60,187	$1,304	26.0%
24	Saint Louis, MO	$50,989	$1,148	27.0%
25	Charleston, SC	$80,020	$1,853	27.8%
26	Washington, DC	$95,873	$2,258	28.3%
27	Cincinnati, OH	$48,227	$1,141	28.4%
28	Dallas, TX	$58,908	$1,403	28.6%
29	Irvine, CA	$121,839	$2,924	28.8%
30	Pittsburgh, PA	$57,869	$1,416	29.4%
31	Hoboken, NJ	$154,993	$3,795	29.4%
32	Long Beach, CA	$74,211	$1,834	29.7%
33	Nashville, TN	$67,531	$1,677	29.8%
34	San Diego, CA	$95,644	$2,391	30.0%
35	Tampa, FL	$65,588	$1,641	30.0%
36	Milwaukee, WI	$47,042	$1,208	30.8%
37	San Francisco, CA	$128,655	$3,351	31.3%
38	Orlando, FL	$59,951	$1,578	31.6%
39	Richmond, VA	$53,556	$1,442	32.3%
40	Fort Lauderdale, FL	$78,954	$2,276	34.6%
41	Los Angeles, CA	$74,048	$2,183	35.4%
42	Chicago, IL	$69,230	$2,043	35.4%
43	Philadelphia, PA	$54,633	$1,778	39.1%
44	Jersey City, NJ	$88,358	$3,261	44.3%
45	Bronx, NY	$43,702	$1,633	44.8%
46	Boston, MA	$84,197	$3,536	50.4%
47	Miami, FL	$52,516	$2,230	51.0%
48	Brooklyn, NY	$70,259	$2,994	51.1%
49	Queens, NY	$75,353	$3,436	54.7%
50	New York, NY	$71,116	$4,104	69.3%

Source: ApartmentList

Construction material costs continued climbing in April, extending a sharp escalation that contractors and developers have tracked since the start of 2026.

• Construction input prices rose 1.7% month over month and 6.2% year to date.
• Construction input prices increased more during the first four months of 2026 than they did during the prior three years combined.
• Materials prices were up 7% year-over-year
• Nonresidential construction input costs rose 7.4% year-over-year

Commodity	1 Month Price Change%	12 Month Price Change%	Pre-covid Change%
Softwood lumber	5.5	0.9	26.8
Hardwood lumber	0.5	3.6	42.1
General millworks	0.3	2.2	35.2
Soft plywood products	2.5	(0.1)	60.6
Hot rolled steel bars, plates and structural shapes	4.4	22.1	65.0
Copper wire and cable	(1.3)	11.8	78.0
Builder’s hardware	(0.0)	8.3	38.5
Plumbing fixtures and fittings	0.0	9.0	35.0
Furnaces and heaters	0.2	6.2	51.5
Sheet metal products	0.8	5.8	60.3
Nails	6.9	7.3	29.6
Major appliances	(0.1)	2.3	24.3
Flat glass	1.1	5.7	41.9
Ready mix concrete	0.4	1.7	39.6
Asphalt roofing and siding	0.3	0.7	40.8
Gypsum products	0.2	(1.0)	48.6
Mineral wool insulation	(0.6)	(2.3)	47.8
CPI-U (unadjusted April)	0.9	3.8	29.1

Source: BisNow

Between January 2020 and January 2026, home prices were up 54% while rents were up only 18%.

The widest spread between price growth and rent growth is 51 percentage points, in Charlotte NC:

Source: ApartmentList

Source: ApartmentList

U.S. apartment construction starts declined to approximately 55,000 units nationwide in the first quarter of 2026, a 73% decrease from the peak reached in early 2022 and the lowest quarterly level since 2011.

The number of units under construction nationwide declined to roughly 579,000 in the first quarter of 2026, down more than 50% from its peak in early 2023 and broadly in line with mid-2010 levels.

Source: CoStar

Healthcare and Social Assistance have added nearly 1.8 million private-sector jobs in the US since the end of 2023 while all of other industries combined have lost 127,800 jobs: