New apartment construction in the Milwaukee market? The majority of it is taking place in the city’s downtown core.
That’s the takeaway from RentCafe’s May 8 Downtown Construction Report, which analyzes apartment construction trends over the last 35 years in the 50 largest cities in the United States.
According to RentCafe, 86.6% of new apartment construction from 2000 through 2009 in the Milwaukee market took place in the city’s downtown area. From 2010 through 2019, 85.3% of the new apartment units added to Milwaukee’s stock were built in the city’s downtown.
And since 2020? A total of 76% of the new apartment properties built in the Milwaukee market rose in the city’s downtown core.
But what about other Midwest cities?
RentCafe reported that Chicago added 13,901 new apartment units in its downtown from 2020 through 2024, with new downtown apartments accounting for 63.3% of the city’s new rental units.
Nashville added 8,892 new downtown apartment units from 2020 through 2024, accounting for 38.1% of new apartment stock in the city.
And Columbus, Ohio, added 8,090 new downtown apartment units from 2020 through 2024. This accounted for 40.4% of the new apartment stock added to the city.
Despite these outliers, downtown apartment construction is actually slowing. RentCafe reported that since 2020, only 34.7% of new apartment completions across the United States have been in core downtown areas. That is a 4.5% drop from 39.2% pre-pandemic.
At the same time, adaptive reuse projects dropped from 10% of new downtown apartment units in the 2010s to just 6% today.
Some cities, though, are still focusing on converting other property types into apartment units. RentCafe pointed to Milwaukee, Detroit and Kansas City, Missouri, as three Midwest cities that have some of the highest shares of downtown apartments created through conversions.
