Renters have quietly enjoyed a nice run over the past two years.
One housing economist even declared 2025 “the year of the resident.”
But as the cost of building has increased, the number of cranes on the horizon has dwindled.
Formerly eager developers are cutting back on fresh construction plans, laying the groundwork for another apartment squeeze.
In other words, thegood times for rentersare running out.
Time’s not up just yet.
The outlook for renters, though, turns gloomier once you look at 2026 and beyond.
The real estate analytics firm Yardi Matrix has characterized 2025 as a “year fraught with change.”
Translation: Snag those apartment deals while you’ve got the option to.
They probably won’t last much longer.
The past few years have been chaotic for apartment dwellers.
Zillow foundapartment rents roseby more than 20% nationally from 2020 through 2022.
At the same time, though, developers were setting the stage for a reversal.
At one point in 2022, more than a million new apartment units were under construction across the country.
But even long-standing buildings with cheaper apartments have been offering freebies to keep tenants from fleeing for greener pastures.
“The pendulum is swinging dramatically,” Parsons tells me.
Predicting the economy’s twists and turns may be hard, but forecasting new-apartment supply is pretty straightforward.
These numbers point to a seismic shift in the rental landscape.
Apartment construction starts dropped last year to the lowest level since 2013, per RealPage.
This slowdown will soon start showing up in the number of new apartments coming to the market.
Yardi Matrix expects 524,000 deliveries in 2025, but then only 414,000 in 2026 and 341,000 the year after.
US cities won’t feel the effects of this pullback equally.
One complicating factor is construction delays.
Parsons anticipates even bigger year-over-year growth, in the “mid-single digits,” starting in 2026.
Parsons doesn’t think so.
Absent that, though, renters are staring down yet another bumpy ride.
“It took a perfect storm of factors to drive this massive construction boom,” Parsons tells me.
“And now a lot of those factors have just gone away.”
James Rodriguezis a senior reporter on Business Insider’s Discourse team.
