The US rental vacancy rate rose to 6.9 percent in the third quarter of 2024, the highest quarterly reading since the pandemic's early spike, per the Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey released in late October 2024. The rise coincided with multifamily completions running at their highest annual pace since the 1970s — roughly 600,000 multifamily units completed in the 12 months through mid-2024, per Census new-residential-construction data. This is information about market data, not investment advice.
Why it matters for small landlords: vacancy is the expense that scales all other expenses, and the national figure is an average of markets moving in opposite directions — Sun Belt metros absorbing record supply, Northeast and Midwest markets near multi-decade lows.
What does the number actually measure?
The Housing Vacancy Survey's rental vacancy rate is the share of rental units vacant and available for rent, sampled nationally each quarter, per the Census Bureau's published methodology. The long-run average since 1960 runs near 7.5 percent, so 6.9 percent is above the post-2020 norm of roughly 5.8 to 6.2 percent but below the historical mean — a normalization from unusually tight, not a collapse. The survey covers all rental housing, not only professionally managed apartments, which is why it reads lower than some institutional datasets and higher than others.
Where is the vacancy actually concentrated?
In the metros that absorbed the completions wave. Austin, Phoenix, and several Florida and Texas metros saw delivery volumes above 5 percent of existing stock in a single year — the threshold where rents respond, per CoStar and RealPage market data cited in 2024 industry reporting — while Northeast markets kept vacancy near or below 4 percent, per the same datasets. The comparison other coverage skipped: the 2024 completions boom traces to permits pulled in 2021-2022 when rates were low; the pipeline empties as those starts finished, and multifamily starts fell by roughly half from their 2022 peak through 2024, per Census building-permit data — meaning today's supply pressure and tomorrow's are moving in opposite directions.
What changes in a small landlord's arithmetic?
Three lines. Turnover cost: a vacant month on a $1,800 unit is $150 of lost income per month amortized over a year, before make-ready costs. Concession budgets: markets above that 5-percent-of-stock delivery threshold saw owner-side concessions — weeks free, deposit waivers — return in 2024, per RealPage's concession tracking, which is a rent cut recorded in a different column. And renewal-versus-new-lease spreads: in soft markets the new-lease rate falls first, which compresses the increase a landlord can ask at renewal, per the same trackers. What the data establishes: a national vacancy normalization with sharply local causes. Where it stops: the survey says nothing about any specific submarket, and the starts decline says today's data will not describe 2026's.
For more context, read How a 1031 Exchange Lets Landlords Defer Capital Gains Tax.