Dallas-area apartment construction has cooled slightly this year, but the area remains the second hottest market in the nation, behind New York City.
Apartment building permits issued in the Dallas-Plano-Irving metro area declined 1.5 percent during the 12-month period ending in May, according to data released Wednesday from Richardson-based RealPage Inc.
A total of 20,191 multi-family homebuilding permits were recorded in the Dallas area.
That's second only to New York-Jersey City, with 30,562 permits, for new building in the same period, according to the new report by the apartment data firm.
The Seattle area ranked as the third hottest apartment construction market in the nation, followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach, Austin-Round Rock, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, Denver, Charlotte, Portland and Atlanta.
In all markets nationwide, multifamily permitting on a seasonally adjusted annual rate totaled 421,000 units in the year-ending May 2018. That’s down 8.5 percent from April’s rate. Even so, the annual figure was 9.1 percent higher than May 2017.
This was the third consecutive month exceeding 400,000 units nationwide and the ninth in the past 12 months.
The annual total of multifamily permits issued in the top 10 metros – 144,407 units – was 6.1 percent greater than the 136,046 issued in the previous 12 months.
Regionally, multifamily permitting rose by 31.1 percent in the Midwest and increased in each of the other three regions. The West saw a 7 percent jump in May, while the Northeast was up 5.7 percent. At 3.2 percent, the South region experienced the smallest increase in seasonally adjusted annual multifamily permits from last year.
The apartment construction comes as multifamily rent growth is slowing in Dallas-Fort Worth and nationwide. In a separate report in June, RealPage reported Dallas annual rent changes of just under 1 percent, compared to a national average of 2.3 percent.