Fort Worth apartment rents continue soaring

The Vue in Fort Worth

For more information:

www.axiometrics.com

Fort Worth’s apartment rent growth reached 6.8 percent in March, marking the Fort Worth-Arlington area’s highest monthly rise in the past year.

“What’s amazing is that rent growth continues climbing and both markets [Fort Worth and Dallas] are full,” said Stephanie McCleskey, vice president of research with Axiometrics Inc., a Dallas-based apartment market research and analysis firm.

- FWBP Digital Partners -

And that’s even with new apartment units opened during the month, McCleskey added.

On average, Fort Worth-area renters paid $907.53 in March compared to $894 in February.

Fort Worth’s annual rent growth was 365 basis points higher than 3.2 percent reported in March 2014. A basis point is a unit equal to one hundredth of a percentage point.

March 2015 occupancy reached 95.2 percent in the Fort Worth area, barely surpassing 95.1 percent in the Dallas-Plano-Irving area during the same period.

- Advertisement -

Meanwhile, the Dallas area’s rent growth metric represented a 56-basis point increase from the 5.5 percent reported in February and a 215-basis-point rise from the 3.9 percent rent growth of March 2014.

The Dallas area’s March occupancy rate was 20 basis points higher than the 94.9 percent growth from February and 50 basis points higher than the 94.6 percent reported in March 2014.

And while the Dallas area’s 6.0 percent March rent growth didn’t break a record, it was still higher than the 5.0 percent national average, according to Axiometrics.

Axiometrics identified 574 units delivered in the Fort Worth area during the first quarter of 2015. Just a year earlier, 301 units came to the market. In the Dallas area, the 3,460 units delivered were more than the 2,729 units delivered in the first quarter of 2014.

- Advertisement -

About 2,513 units are expected to open in Fort Worth by the end of 2015, far fewer than the 15,864 units expected to be delivered in Dallas, according to Axiometrics.

March numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau show the Dallas area with annual job growth of 4.0 percent compared to the Fort Worth area’s job growth is 2.6 percent. That leads McCleskey to expect enough demand to absorb the new supply.

Still, “we can expect some moderation in both occupancy and rent growth as the new units come to the market,” McCleskey said.