Cleveland Multifamily Report – October 2024
How this midwestern underdog is powering through.
Cleveland advertised asking rents increased by 0.2 percent on a trailing three-month basis through August, outperforming the national average. Rates were up 3.0 percent year-over-year, to $1,196, well above the 0.8 percent national rate of growth, which brought the U.S. average to $1,741. The metro’s occupancy rate decreased by 40 basis points year-over-year, to 94.5 percent as of July, just below the 94.7 percent U.S. figure.
In June, Cleveland’s unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, while Akron settled at 5.3 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both figures were higher than the national average of 4.1 percent. Cleveland employment gains were meagre, with only 2,600 net jobs added in the 12 months ending in June, for a 0.4 percent expansion. Ahead of groundbreaking, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building at Case Western Reserve University received more than $100 million in private donations. The 189,000-squarefoot building is scheduled to open in the fall of 2026.
The metro had 4,152 units under construction as of August and an additional 15,000 units in the planning and permitting stages. Transactions during the first eight months of the year consisted mostly of Renter-by-Necessity properties, which accounted for $200 million of total volume. Meanwhile, this year’s sales have already outpaced 2023’s sluggish transaction volume of $170 million.
