Apartment growth is shifting to counties with lower population densities, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders Home Building Geography Index for the first quarter of 2025, released earlier this month.
The market share of apartment starts in large metro core counties continued a long-term downward trend. In 2016, it was 45.1%. Since then, it has fallen 9.4 percentage points to a 35.5% share, the lowest level since the HBGI’s inception.
HBGI is a quarterly measurement of building conditions across the country. It uses county-level information about single-family and multifamily permits to gauge housing construction growth in various urban and rural geographies.
Source: NAHB: Multifamily construction migrates to less populous areas | Multifamily Dive
