Speed of Apartment-Building in Twin Cities Signals 'Normalization of the Market'

The Twin Cities are seeing apartments being built at a rapid pace, which the data show will only be speeding up. Currently, the metro has the 24th-fastest rate in the U.S. 

Some say that rents may stabilize and vacancies will increase with the influx of new apartments “It’s not going to be a crash, but it will be a normalization of the market,” says Brenda Hvambsal, a vice president at property management firm Steven Scott Management. The Star Tribune reports that in 2017, much new apartment construction began to shift out of the Twin Cities and into the surrounding suburbs. This year about half of new units will be in the 'burbs, but in 2019 estimates say it will hit about 70 percent.

Developers built nearly 24,000 apartments in the Twin Cities since 2010 in what’s been seen as a booming market. But the action this year and next will blow all that away. By the end of next year, builders will have completed another 13,000 units, chiefly market-rate and luxury apartments, in the metro. A much smaller number of income-restricted apartments will also get built.

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