Multifamily developers turned their attention from urban cores to the suburbs in recent years, but downtowns are beginning to see a rekindled focus. RentCafe took a deep dive into development and adaptive-reuse trends over the past three decades in 50 of the largest cities.
Since 2020, the national share of downtown apartments dropped from 39.2% pre-pandemic to 34.7%. In addition, downtown adaptive-reuse projects dropped from 10% in the 2010s to 6%.
“Overall, downtown apartment construction peaked in 2019 with 44% of all new rentals added that year,” noted the report. “On the other hand, adaptive-reuse projects thrived in the late 1990s and 2000s, when they made up 16% of all new apartments in downtown areas—the highest share in the last three and a half decades.”
Here are some of RentCafe’s key findings:
- Washington, D.C., leads the nation for the highest number of downtown apartments completed between 2020 and 2024—nearly 23,000 units;
- Chicago ranks second on the list, with 13,901 units added downtown between 2020 and 2024. Denver, Atlanta, and Charlotte, North Carolina, round out the top five;
- Several other cities are concentrating the majority of their construction efforts in downtown central areas—San Francisco, 75.3%; Milwaukee, 76%; Long Beach, California, 78.6%; and Oakland, California, 62.2%;
- San Jose, California, saw a 28-percentage-point increase in downtown growth compared with the prior decade. Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, also saw impressive downtown growth;
- Los Angeles saw the steepest decline in downtown construction efforts—from over 50% of new units built downtown in the prior decade to just 19.1%. Memphis, Tennessee; Minneapolis; and Philadelphia saw similar decreases; and
- Detroit; Kansas City, Missouri; Manhattan, New York; and Milwaukee have some of the nation’s highest shares for downtown residential adaptive-reuse projects—ranging from 18.9% to over a third of units added from conversions since 2020.
