While multifamily housing demand is generally robust in Salt Lake City, the metro has struggled to keep pace with an immense wave of supply, according to RealPage chief economist Carl Whitaker.
In the year-ending November, Salt Lake City rents fell 3.1%. Whitaker notes September saw rents fall by 1.2% during that 30-day window, the second largest monthly decline since November 2010.
“The key driver behind retracting rent is clearly the metro’s prodigious block of apartment construction, which has grown Salt Lake City’s existing apartment inventory by an incredible 17% in just three years,” he says.
At the market’s peak in 2022, about 19,000 market-rate apartments were under construction—one unit under construction for every six existing units at the time. Whitaker shares that scale of inventory growth illustrates why it’s taken the local market so long to absorb the new supply.
“But the narrative of oversupply is quickly changing. At present, just 6,200 market-rate multifamily units are under construction—the smallest total in more than eight years,” he says. “As such, 2025’s still-elevated, though already cooling, supply total of 4,400 units is expected to ease further with just 3,300 units delivering in 2026. And while new starts activity has ticked up slight from the late 2024 low point, the 2,600 units started in the past 12 months account for an 11-year low.”
Job growth has been strong, with the metro recording an addition of nearly a quarter-million new positions over the past decade. Salt Lake City’s annual job growth has trailed the U.S. average in just four of the past 36 months, outpacing the nation buy an average of 0.4 percentage points during the past three years. According to Whitaker, economic diversification, in particular the growth in the local tech sector, has also helped the metro’s forward-looking growth trajectory and has been a factor for in-migration. In addition, that migration has largely been supported by relative affordability.
“The biggest headwind in Salt Lake City may be more of a nationally derived trend than a local one; if labor market fundamentals continue to show signs of slack, then that could weaken demand further,” he says. “It is also a market where resident turnover is almost always among the highest such rates in the nation. So unless there is a burst of new lease activity driven by labor market growth, then Salt Lake City occupancy may face some challenges as the turnover runs higher than the national norm.”
While 2025 didn’t see the uptick in transaction volume that many expected, 52 properties traded hands through the third quarter, up from the prior year’s total of 33. But the level still remains below the pre-2020 mark.
“With that said, 2026 could see some more transaction activity spurred by the confluence of interest rate clarity/culmination of rate cuts in prior years, expected stabilization of market fundamentals, and a dash of distressed properties added to the mix (though distress remains largely confined to Class C assets with floating rates due for near-term loan maturation,” adds Whitaker.