New apartment construction will surpass 500K units in 2025

A nationwide housing shortage made supply the name of the game, and some cities have really stepped up to the plate.

New apartment construction across the country is slated to surpass 500,000 units by the end of the year, according to an annual report by RentCafe.

The analysis, which uses data from Yardi Matrix, compared building efforts by regions, metros and cities — and one area came out on top. 

Doug Resller, senior analyst at Yardi Matrix, said in the report that increasing hurdles to homeownership are fueling demand for rental housing. 

Of the 506,353 new apartments expected to open their doors before 2026, more than half are coming out of the South. 

The Sunbelt’s impressive contribution — 52.5% of new apartment supply, to be exact — largely has Texas and Florida to thank. The two residential powerhouses are projected to offer up nearly 30% of all new units in America this year, according to the report. 

A whopping 81,407 apartments are expected out of Texas, the country’s second most populous state. Fast-growing Austin led RentCafe’s city-level ranking, thanks to an aggressive rezoning effort that has yielded an excess of new housing and a huge decline in rents. Other cities, like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas, trailed close behind in the top 10 list.

Charlotte, North Carolina took second place among US cities, with 12,365 new units anticipated to welcome the hoards of young professionals, families and remote workers that have flocked there in recent years.

“Southern metros typically offer streamlined approval processes and fewer regulatory hurdles, making it easier to bring multifamily projects to market,” wrote Ressler.

When it comes to metro areas, however, New York delivered. Heavy construction in Brooklyn and Manhattan earned the massive metro its fourth consecutive year at the top of the list, with more than 30,000 units expected by the end of the year.

Brooklyn, in particular, is set up to contribute nearly a quarter of the metro’s new apartments. 

New York surpassed runner-up Dallas metro by more than 1,000 units, but both cities documented dips from last year. Declines ranged from 8.4% in New York to a 22.4% drop in Dallas. Only five of the country’s top 20 producing metros saw annual growth.

This year’s overall decline from 2024 construction numbers — from roughly 640,000 units down to 506,000 — represents a natural cooldown after years of rapid growth, the report suggested.

Riverside, California was an outlier, with apartment completions expected this year up a whopping 154% from 2024. Across the country, Naples, Florida documented the biggest jump in completed units, up 275% from last year with more than 3,100 completed units.

Chicago saw the country’s biggest construction dip, down 60% to 3,756 new units estimated in 2025.