A glut of apartment inventory across the Sun Belt helped push the national apartment vacancy rate to 7.3 percent this spring, forcing a growing number of property managers to offer concessions to lure in new tenants.
Incentives such as free rent, waived application and other fees, and reduced move-in costs showed up on about 40 percent of apartment listings during the spring period, a rental report released May 27 by Zillow found. A year prior, about one-third of apartment listings offered concessions. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for apartments was extremely robust, only 16 percent of property managers used concessions to bring in new tenants.
“With more supply on the market than in decades, there are real choices out there—and real room to negotiate on price, perks and terms,” Zillow senior economist Kara Ng said.
“Renters are in a position to push for a better deal, and property managers are ready to give them one.”
New apartment deliveries have varied over the past few years. Although multifamily starts tapered off by more than 40 percent between 2023 and 2025, thousands of new units are under construction in Sun Belt cities such as Orlando and Miami, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Austin, Texas; and Phoenix, Arizona. Those cities will add between 4 and 5 percent to their apartment inventory in 2026 and 2027, a multifamily study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute stated.
According to Zillow, the markets that offered the highest concentration of rental concessions in April include Denver, Colorado, at 68.3 percent; Charlotte, North Carolina, at 66.6 percent; Dallas and Austin, Texas, at 64.2 percent and 63.8 percent, respectively; and Nashville at 62.6 percent.
Conversely, markets that have tighter inventory levels and stronger demand saw far fewer property managers offering rental concessions. These cities include Buffalo, New York (11.1 percent) and New York City (18.4 percent); Providence, Rhode Island (12.6 percent); New Orleans, Louisiana (19.2 percent); and Chicago, Illinois (21.7 percent).
Concessions can mean big savings for apartment renters. About one-third of renters said a free month’s rent is the best perk offered by property managers. With apartment rents averaging $1,930, that amount of savings is a significant financial windfall for renters, Zillow said.
Despite the spring uptick, rental concessions may start declining in more markets as supply tightens. Multifamily starts are expected to fall by 5 percent in 2026, to an annual clip of 392,000 units and tumble an additional 6 percent in 2027, to 367,000 new doors, the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) stated. Multifamily starts peaked in 2022 at 547,000 units, with deliveries spiking to a 38-year high in 2024 at 608,000 new door keys, the NAHB added.
“The multifamily market has slowed due to tighter financing and elevated construction costs and is moving towards a more constrained development environment,” said Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis for the NAHB.
