Class A lifestyle buildings with pools and coworking spaces are seeing flat or negative rent growth, while smaller workforce housing is up about 0.5%. For owners of 5-50 unit portfolios, that modest gain points to where the market is actually moving.
Here is where it gets interesting for the owners I work with, the ones with 5 to 50 units. First, the properties being hit hardest are large, new Class A buildings, the ones with the pools and the coworking spaces that were built during the boom. These are what the industry calls lifestyle assets, and nationally they posted flat or negative rent growth. But renter-by-necessity properties, meaning the smaller, workforce-oriented buildings where people rent because they need to, actually grew rents at 0.5%. That is not a big number, but it is positive, and it is a different direction from the headline.
