➤ Key Highlights
720,000 multifamily units are under construction — down 19.6% year-over-year and 0.6% month-over-month.
Completions ran at an annualized 383,000 units in 5+ unit buildings.
That completion pace is down 39.8% year-over-year.
Starts spiked in the latest read, but financing remains difficult.
Elevated near-term deliveries are still pressuring many metros.
➤ Signal
Today’s deliveries are masking tomorrow’s shortage — the pipeline is draining faster than starts can refill it.
The headline numbers cut two ways. Right now, a wave of 2024–25 starts is still delivering, keeping concessions elevated and rents soft in oversupplied Sun Belt metros. That’s the near-term pain.
But the pipeline behind it is collapsing. A 39.8% year-over-year drop in completions and a 19.6% decline in units under construction means the supply that lands in 2027–28 will be a fraction of today’s. Demand doesn’t fall the same way.
For underwriters, the trap is extrapolating current softness forward. The deals penciled today deliver into a thinner competitive set, and the contrarian move — starting when others won’t — is exactly what the pipeline data rewards. Expect rent growth to reaccelerate in 2027 as deliveries thin; sponsors who can finance through the trough capture the recovery, while those waiting for “clarity” arrive late.
➤ Takeaway
The cure for low rents is low supply — and the supply is already disappearing.
Source: HUD / U.S. Census Bureau via Multifamily Dive — June 2026
