Cincinnati Has Recorded Year-over-Year Rent Growth for 16 Straight Years

What's happening in Cincinnati today serves as a great microcosm of the Midwest region's low volatility profile. There simply aren't many markets that haven't faced year-over-year rent cuts at some point in the past six years. For some, that was a COVID-era contraction. For others, it's the post-COVID era supply boom. But neither of those influences swayed the Cincinnati apartment market all that much, and its rents have grown year-over-year now for 65-straight quarters. That's 16 years of modest – though positive – expansion in rents. Despite the metro's stability in its apartment market, the local economy hasn't been quite as robust. The metro began shedding jobs late last year, and while it was neither substantial nor prolonged (for now at least), it's enough to result in slowing demand fundamentals. Meanwhile, the market is working through what is by local standards a bit of a construction boom. Cincinnati has added nearly 13,000 new apartment units in the past five years. By comparison, the market took 10 years to add 13,000 units prior to that (2011 - 2021). As a result, Cincinnati's year-over-year rent growth (1.1%) is cooling quickly. Though rents still grew by at least 1% in the year-ending 2nd quarter, this time last year rents were growing by 3.5%. So, cooling demand is coinciding with at least a little supply pressure.