This year will be the first year in U.S. history that more than 500,000 new apartments are constructed, according to a new analysis of the 2024 rental market from RentCafe. 

The trend, which is anticipated to abate slightly in 2025, may again resurface by 2028 with exceptions remaining in markets such as Minneapolis and Houston. 

Topping the list was the greater New York metro area with 32,935 new units despite the city having permitted its lowest number of new apartments since 2016 last year. Dallas followed closely in second place, with booming  Austin, Texas, finishing a distant third. Housing efforts there have struggled to keep pace after demand began to rapidly increase in 2020.

Phoenix came in fourth on the list with 20,141 new units, giving a face to the effects of the construction loophole underpinning its population boom in the face of questions surrounding water scarcity. (Paradoxically, as RentCafe points out, “[a] shift towards sustainability could be one of the reasons why the city has been attracting more and more environmentally conscious businesses and residents in recent years.”)

Atlanta’s new Georgia Tech-backed Technology Square innovation district helped boost its demand, rounding out the top five. The New York-Dallas-Austin mix will maintain its foothold over the next five years, joined in the prospective top five by Miami and Los Angeles. Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco are among the biggest in terms of expected declines when compared against the 2019 through 2023 building cycle.

Nationwide, there is still a forecasted need for more than 4.3 million new units before 2035, according to a two-year-old study from the National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association. Underbuilding after the 2008 recession largely set the table for this newfound boom.