Apartment vacancy rates up in my market - what are you seeing?

[Joe Splitrock]

I just read an article that vacancy rates for apartments have doubled over last year to almost 9% in my city, Sioux Falls, SD. We had $72M worth of new apartments built in 2015 in a city under 200,000 people! I am not sure if this is a leading factor showing we are about to see a rent pull back. Our home sales market is hot right now, so maybe people are opting to buy homes rather than rent. The huge amount of new construction is a key factor. The question is when will these big developers stop? Will it be like oil, where they are pumping to driving prices down until it runs people out of business?

I am curious what you are seeing in other markets, specifically smaller markets in the Midwest.

Full article:

http://www.keloland.com/news/article/your-money-ma...

[Julie Marquez]

Maybe they all moved to Seattle, we have no vacancy problems here. Interesting to analyze your local market, that's a lot of new apartments on the market, and it sounds like the homes are attractive to people too.