YIMBYism stays winning.
From the rent tracker report by Redfin:
The median U.S. asking rent fell 0.7% year over year in November to $1,595, the lowest level since March 2022. Rents were down 1.1% on a month-over-month basis.
The median rent is now 6.2% lower than when it hit an all-time high of $1,700 in August 2022.
While the rental market has remained essentially flat over the past two years, rents have started to tick down slightly in recent months, thanks in part to the record number of new apartments that have been completed this year.
Nationally, apartment completions rose 22.6% year over year to the highest level in over 12 years in the second quarter. As a result, the vacancy rate for buildings with five or more units rose to 8% in the third quarter, the highest level since early 2021.
“Renters in areas where construction has boomed are in a sweet spot right now. Affordability is improving as rents fall and wages rise, and there is increased choice with more and more new apartment buildings opening,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “As construction starts to slow, rents will eventually tick back up, but 2025 is shaping up as a renter’s market with potential for the affordability gap between buying and renting to widen.”
Elected leadership in Austin have gone all in on YIMBYism. Austin was the host city of the YIMBYtown conference in March of 2024, which was kicked off by Austin’s mayor Kirk Watson. Montana governor Greg Gianforte and former HUD secretary Julian Castro were also in attendance.
It seems that this policy movement is a bright spot of bipartisanship in a political climate that would rather have you believe that everyone is evil—except your guy, of course.
The American Enterprise Institute’s work on what they call Walkable Oriented Development is a great resource that demonstrates why everyone should have expected Austin’s housing policy changes would have these results.
Austin has enacted simple but sweeping reforms: allow homes to be built on smaller lots, allow more mixed-use and mixed-density zoning arrangements, and allow the construction of taller apartment and condo buildings.
Prices go down when you increase supply. Who’da thunk it?