Market ends year with rents steady, vacancies higher

Conditions are looking up for tenants in metro Denver and Boulder as more new apartments keep rolling into the market, keeping rents in check and providing more options for those looking for housing, according to a quarterly update from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.

The average rent for an apartment in the sevencounty metro area, including Boulder, was $1,870 in the fourth quarter, which is down from $1,888 in the third quarter and not much above the average of $1,838 a year earlier.

Two years ago, the average rent was at $1,708.67, which is below current levels after adjusting for inflation.

Average rents were highest in Douglas County at $2,006 a month, followed by Boulder/broomfield at $1,950 a month and Denver at $1,909 a month. Adams and Arapahoe counties had the lowest rents at $1,725 and $1,794 a month, respectively.

The vacancy rate or share of unrented and available apartments metro-wide was 5.8%, up from 5.4% in the third quarter and 5.6% a year earlier. Adams, Denver and Douglas counties reported the highest vacancy rates at 6.1%.

“The long and short of it is, the market has been pretty stable over the last couple of years,” said Scott Rathbun, president of Apartment Appraisers & Consultants in Denver during a Zoom call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

Last year, developers supplied 13,246 new apartments, with tenants claiming or “absorbing” 11,613 of those units.

In a sign of how the market has become more competitive, offering a month of free rent to prospective tenants has become fairly standard, Rathbun said.

In Denver’s denser neighborhoods with a lot of new units arriving, free rent concessions can run as long as six to eight weeks, he said.

With about 45,000 apartments currently under construction, vacancies will likely keep rising this year and next.