Austin still one of Texas’ hottest apartment rental markets
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If you’ve been looking to rent an apartment in Central Texas for the past year, here’s something you already know: There’s still a lot of competition for rental units in the Austin metro area.
According to RentCafe.com’s latest 2022 Texas report. RentCafe.com is a nationwide apartment search website and part of Yardi Systems.
El Paso was the most competitive rental market in Texas in 2022, followed by McAllen and Dallas, RentCafe.com said.
The RentCafe report focuses on the apartment market and how much competition renters faced when looking for a new apartment. The report looked at how many renters decided to renew their leases and how many applied for a new lease in Austin last year. The Austin market in the RentCafe report includes Austin, Round Rock, San Marcos, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, Buda, Leander and Hutto.
Here’s what the report found about the Austin market:
In 2022, more than one-third of Austin renters looked for a new apartment to rent, while 57.7% of them decided to renew their leases, fueling competition for vacant rentals. As a result, an average of 12 potential tenants applied for each vacant apartment in the area. Apartments in Austin were filled in 30 days, with the average days of vacancy falling to 27 during the peak rental season between May and August. Occupancy rates reached 94.9%. Austin witnessed a strong pace of apartment construction in 2022, thanks to a 2.9% increase in rental supply. Of all the Texas markets RentCafe analyzed, Austin had the second-highest growth in the share of new apartments. Austin’s market grew less competitive during the peak rental season, due to slightly lower occupancy and lease renewals than in the first half of the year. .Titan begins work on project at Lockhart Industrial Park
Titan Development, a real estate development and investment firm, has begun construction on its first speculative building at Lockhart 130 Industrial Park in south Austin.
Building 1 on the 45.1-acre site in Lockhart calls for 167,794 square feet of industrial space near several major highways between Austin and San Antonio, including Texas 130, Interstate 35 and Interstate 10.
Construction on building 1 is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of this year.
Lockhart Industrial Park 130 will have a total of four buildings, with a total space of 650,000 square feet.
The Austin region continues to experience high demand among industrial users seeking storage, manufacturing and distribution space. More than 14 million square feet of space was added to the Austin-area industrial market last year through November, an increase of more than 100% over the previous year. That’s according to Partners Real Estate Co., the holding company of real estate investment and development platform Partners Capital and commercial real estate services firm NAI Partners.
With Chem-Energy Corporation planning a $1 billion solar and battery plant in nearby Uhland and a 3,173-acre mixed-use, master-planned community to be built southwest of Lockhart, the area is experiencing a surge in industrial and residential development. Titan executives said in a press release.
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