America‘s Commercial Real Estate Show · Bull Realty

Multifamily Market Outlook for 2026 & Beyond with Carl Whitaker

·22 min·2 clips

Multifamily occupancy just hit 95%, a magic number that signals the market is functionally full.

Apartments sit at the center of this one. Michael Bull starts with the practical reality: many investment groups still care about multifamily, while housing costs keep getting talked up. Rent growth has cooled. The setup walks through rents rising for years, then flattening somewhat over the past few years, before moving into investment sales activity. The rate story takes over. Carl says the federal funds rate is not just high by recent standards. The speed of the hikes changed the math. Construction financing gets hit hard. He puts the biggest developer headache on the interest-rate environment and the pressure it puts on financing new projects. Tariffs add another cloud over the construction outlook, right alongside the open question of when cuts show up. They may not show up on the old schedule. Carl says the beginning-of-2025 consensus expected two quarter-point cuts, but by halfway through the year that confidence had slipped. Timing matters in the real world. The question is when lower rates actually work their way through the system, not just whether policy rates move. Supply is the swing factor. When asked about markets with heavier deliveries, Carl says demand can outpace supply across much of the country in 2026. Some markets need more time. He names Austin, Charlotte, New York, and maybe Raleigh as places where heavy inventory growth could take longer to absorb. The Sunbelt has a different feel. In Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta, he says construction is dropping fast enough that rent growth could reach two and a half to three and a half percent, unless demand really cracks.

As heard by us

A practical multifamily outlook on rents, rates, and supply.

The segment treats multifamily as a market that is still adjusting after the rate shock. Rents have flattened after several years of gains, investment sales are starting to move again, and higher rates have slowed construction financing enough to shape the supply picture heading…

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You want a grounded read on where apartment rents and supply may go next.

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