For 10 years, apartments across the United States have been getting smaller as developers focused on expanding common areas in their multifamily projects. This trend, though, might be reversing.
According to a report released in early June from RENTCafe, developers in several cities are building larger apartments today. Part of the reason? Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of employees will be working from home, at least for the foreseeable future. These employees need more space for home offices.
Developers see this, and many are planning larger apartment units as a way to attract renters.
According to the RENTCafe blog, developers in 36 percent of U.S. cities are building larger apartments today compared with what they were building five years ago. Citing data from Yardi Matrix, RENTCafe reports that apartments in these cities are increasing by nearly 50 square feet on average.
That might not seem like much, but that’s actually a sizable increase for an apartment unit. It’s no coincidence that this new square footage is just enough for a small home office.
RENTCafe found that developers who are building larger units are adding an average of 28 square feet to one-bedroom apartments, 39 square feet to two-bedroom units and 105 to three-bedroom apartments.
“The pandemic and work-from-home has made people more conscious of the space in which they live and work,” said Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix. “The pandemic has significantly accelerated issues on designers’ minds well before 2020. These issues involve the rise of the home as a workspace, and a deeper emphasis on health and well-being.”
Is this trend taking place in the Midwest? RENTCafe did report on two cities in this region that are seeing larger apartments under construction now than they saw during the last five years, Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago.
In Columbus, developers are building apartments that are an average of 42 square feet larger today than they were during the last five years. And in Chicago, they’re building units that are an average of 38 square feet larger.
Is this the start of a long-term trend? That’s difficult to answer.
Daryl Spradley, senior vice president of Charles Wayne Consulting, Inc., in Orlando, Florida, told RENTCafe that while some cities are seeing an upsizing trend, it’s still too early to know whether this has been triggered by the pandemic.
He said that this growth in size is being fueled by developers who are addressing “renters by choice” and “digital nomads,” people with high income who choose not to buy, but to rent, because they like the mobility offered by renting.
“The number of people that earn over $100,000 a year is significantly higher than it was two or three years ago. Those are renters, but obviously renters by choice because they can go out and buy a house,” Spradley said.
