How important are multi-family communities to the national economy? According to the latest report from the National Multi Housing Council and the National Apartment Association, apartments and their residents contributed $1.1 trillion to the national economy in 2011.
And all that money supported 25.4 million jobs.
Those are the rather impressive results from research conducted by economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis.
Here are some other ways that multi-family has helped boost the national economy:
According to the report, the apartment industry spent $14.8 billion on construction in 2011. And remember, this happened in a year with the lowest number of multi-family completions on record, just 130,000 new units. Before the recession, that number stood at an average of around 270,000 completions.
The multi-family industry spent $67.9 billion in 2011 to both operate and improve the country’s 19.3 million apartments. That supported 2.3 million total jobs.
The 35 million apartment residents in the country spent $421.5 billion on goods and services in 2011, according to the report. That spending supported 22.8 million jobs across the United States.
The point of the study? We all know that the single-family housing market plays a major role in the health of the national economy. This study shows that the multi-family market makes its own big impact, something that study lead Fuller emphasized in a written statement.
“Although attention is usually focused on homebuilding and the single-family sector, the annual construction and operating outlays for apartment buildings with five or more units are major sources of economic activity, jobs and personal earnings,” said Fuller. “In addition, the residents of apartment buildings constitute an important source of local, state and national economic activity as their spending for goods and services is recycled through the economy.”
