The Apartment Supply Boom Is Fading — But Not Everywhere
Nationally, the apartment supply boom is fading.
After years of record multifamily construction, the wave of completed apartments hitting the market is beginning to recede.
That should eventually take pressure off rents.
But the next phase won’t look the same everywhere. The metro data tell a more complicated story.
Our estimates show apartment deliveries falling sharply in several of the markets hit hardest by the recent supply boom — while other metros are still adding supply faster than they did last year.
Where apartment supply is still rising
Among the 40 largest apartment markets by expected 2026 deliveries in our dataset — drawn from roughly 100 major U.S. metros we track — several are still increasing supply:
- Orlando: roughly +37%
- Chicago: roughly +36%
- North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton: roughly +34%
These are metros adding more apartments in 2026 than in 2025, even as the national pipeline thins.
Two others — Detroit (approximately +99%) and Baltimore (approximately +61%) — show even larger percentage increases. But those come off unusually low 2025 delivery levels, so the percentage overstates the underlying shift. A market that delivered very little last year can post a large percentage gain on a fairly ordinary year of construction. Orlando and Chicago are different: they are rising off already-substantial recent supply.
Orlando stands out most. Our estimates show deliveries rising sharply in 2026 even though the upstream construction pipeline has already begun to contract. In other words, the market is still digesting supply that was set in motion before developers pulled back.
Counting apartments isn’t enough
Here’s the catch: a rising or falling supply number doesn’t tell you the outcome by itself.
What matters is how new supply compares with the demand available to absorb it.
Two metros with the same increase in deliveries can be in very different positions. One may be layering supply onto a market that has already struggled to absorb the last wave. Another may be adding to a market where demand has quietly kept pace.
Same supply signal. Very different implications.
That’s the difference between counting apartments and understanding a market. Supply tells us what is coming. Demand tells us whether the market can absorb it.
Where the wave is rolling over
At the other end are markets where the supply adjustment is much further along. Among the same 40 largest apartment markets, the biggest declines are:
- Washington: roughly −34%
- Phoenix: roughly −30%
- Jacksonville: roughly −28%
- Salt Lake City: roughly −26%
- Louisville: roughly −23%
Phoenix is the one I would watch most closely. It has been one of the poster children for apartment oversupply, and our estimates show deliveries falling approximately 30% in 2026 — with multifamily permitting falling alongside them. The correction is showing up on both fronts: the apartments arriving now, and the pipeline behind them.
That’s often how a supply correction takes hold — less through a sudden shift in demand than through builders stepping back and letting the market catch up to the supply already delivered.
Salt Lake City is cutting deliveries too, by roughly 26%. But it’s a different case: its permit pipeline has already begun to turn back up, a hint that its pullback may prove shorter-lived than Phoenix’s.
Falling conditions don’t stop construction immediately
This is one of the most important points in the data.
Developers can still be delivering thousands of apartments after market conditions have softened. That isn’t irrational — it’s the lag built into construction.
An apartment delivered today may have been conceived, financed, permitted and started when rents were rising and financing looked completely different. By the time conditions weaken, much of that supply is already committed.
That’s why some markets are still adding apartments while others are already contracting: they set their pipelines in motion at different times. The two groups are at different points in the same adjustment.
The next supply cycle will be local
Nationally, the boom is fading. The local supply cycle isn’t uniform.
The signal I’d watch is where 2026 deliveries are falling and the permitted pipeline behind them is thin. That’s the supply side of a turn — the part you can see coming before it shows up in the market data everyone else is watching. Demand has to cooperate too, but supply is the leading, more predictable half.
By that measure, Phoenix is the interesting one: deliveries are falling sharply now, and the permit pipeline behind them has thinned alongside — the correction is arriving on both fronts at once.
Orlando is the mirror image. Deliveries are still rising in 2026, but its permit pipeline has already contracted sharply. The apartments arriving now are the tail of a wave set in motion earlier — not a sign the building continues.
What about 2027?
The permits already in the system suggest the pipeline feeding 2027 is thinning in many markets.
A market with heavy 2026 deliveries but little permitted behind them is running out of new supply — the pipeline is drying up, and a rebalancing is underway. A market where permits keep arriving will keep adding supply, and its oversupply is likely to persist.
That’s the signal we’ll be watching.
How we estimate future apartment completions. The Census Bureau publishes multifamily permits by metropolitan area but not a comparable metro-level series for completed apartments. Quantitative Research Group combines local permit histories with the historical relationship between authorization and completion observed in national construction data to estimate when permitted units are likely to reach the market. The model adjusts for authorized units that do not ultimately become completed apartments and is tested on periods not used to estimate it. The resulting figures measure deliveries implied by the construction pipeline observed to date — not simply permits issued during a calendar year. Comparisons are limited to sizable delivery markets so very small bases do not dominate the rankings.
