The Dallas-Fort Worth apartment market continued to strengthen in October with rising rent levels and annual effective rent growth, according to Axiometrics, a Dallas-based apartment market research and analysis firm.
Job growth rose by 3 percent in the region, feeding high demand for apartments and spurring the increase of effective rent growth to 6.2 percent in the Dallas-Plano-Irving market and 6.8 percent in the Fort Worth-Arlington market.
“The Dallas-Fort Worth area continues to be among the most robust in the nation,” said Stephanie McCleskey, Axiometrics’ vice president of research, commenting in a news release.
Fort Worth has outperformed Dallas for most of this year, mostly because of little new supply coming into Tarrant County, McCleskey noted. While Dallas is expected to gain 15,242 new units this year, only 3,559 have been identified for Fort Worth, she said.
Many of those – 746 apartments – are earmarked for the Southwest submarket, where development along the Chisholm Trail Parkway is ramping up.
Other October highlights:
• Dallas renters paid an average rent of $1,074 per unit per month in October, while the average Fort Worth monthly rent was $965.
• Dallas’ 6.2 percent annual effective-rent-growth rate was 2 basis points (bps) higher than September’s rate, which also rounded to 6.2 percent, and 123 bps higher than the 5.0 percent of October 2015. A basis point is a unit equal to one hundredth of a percentage point.
• Fort Worth’s growth rate of 6.8 percent was a 31-bps increase from September’s 6.5 percent and 148 bps higher than the 5.4 percent of one year ago.
• Dallas apartments were 95.5 percent occupied in October, a 15-bps decrease from September’s 95.6 percent, but a 56-bps increase from October 2014.
• Fort Worth recorded 95.8 percent occupancy in October, 22 bps lower than the previous month’s 96.0 percent, but 102 bps higher than the 94.8 percent of October 2014.
Meanwhile, the eastern portion of the Metroplex proved to be the strongest in October. The Far Northeast submarket – north of the Interstate 635 to the Richardson city limit, between Greenville Avenue and Jupiter Road – had the highest effective rent growth at 9.3 percent, followed by Garland (9.2 percent), Mesquite-Seagoville (9.1 percent) and South White Rock/Interstate 30 (8.8 percent).
The urban core Oak Lawn submarket is gradually strengthening, with 2.0 percent rent growth in October.