RentCafe Identifies Cities Building Most Apartments Downtown

(Image courtesy of RentCafe; Breakout image courtesy of SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS/pexels.com)

RentCafe, Santa Barbara, Calif., released its Downtown Construction Report, finding Washington, D.C., is leading large cities in terms of downtown apartments completed between 2020-2024.

The district added 22,959 new apartment units during the four-year period, and the share of adaptive reuse apartments in the downtown area was 7.3%.

Next is Chicago, with 13,901 units and 5.4% adaptive reuse, Denver with 13,149 units and 5.5% adaptive reuse, Atlanta with 11,130 units and 1.5% adaptive reuse and Charlotte, N.C. with 11,031 units, but no adaptive reuse in downtown areas.

Rounding out the top 10 are Miami, Seattle, Nashville, Tenn., Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio.

In general, RentCafe warned that downtown areas are losing momentum when it comes to apartment construction. Since 2020, just over one-third (34.7%) of new apartment completions have been in cities’ core areas. That’s down from 39.2% pre-pandemic. Downtown apartment construction hit a peak in 2019, with 44% of all new rentals added that year.

And, while there’s been much talk about transforming office space–and other buildings–into apartments, adaptive reuse projects fell to 6% from 10% of downtown builds in the 2010s. Rates of such projects were even higher in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they made up 16% of all new apartments in downtown areas.

However, some cities are investing more in adaptive reuse. Manhattan, Milwaukee, Detroit and Kansas City, Mo., have some of the highest shares of downtown apartments added through conversion.