Apartment vacancies down throughout Triad
The average vacancy rate for apartments in the Triad is about 8.1 percent, indicating strong demand and fewer new apartments coming online in recent months.
But that could change soon. Nearly 3,200 units are in the planning stages, according to Real Data Apartment Market Research, a Charlotte-based group. Only 793 units are under construction right now, but planned apartments could start popping up in the Triad by the end of 2007, reports Engle Addington, a multi-family analyst for Real-Data.
Actually, some of these planned apartments could pop up before that. If you read today's business page, you likely saw the photo of a D.H. Griffin wrecker taking down the old Organic Pigments building at Martin Luther King and Gorrell downtown. The first of 250-plus apartments over there could open this summer. That project, called City View, is a collaboration between Bob Isner, Milton Kern and Signature Properties.
Real Data predicts that vacancy rates will improve 6 percent to 7 percent during the next year, but it's a toss-up after that, as more apartments come online and saturate the market.
Older apartment communities - six to 15 years old - boasted the lowest vacancy rates in Real Data's study - 6.4 percent. Those units account for about 23 percent of apartments in the Triad.
The 8.1 percent overall vacancy rate is actually the lowest experienced in the Triad as a whole since March 2001, but it's nowhere near the 3.4 percent vacancy rate the area reported 10 years ago.
Catch the jump for the details ...
* Communities older than 30 years represent nearly 30 percent of the Triad market and saw improvements in vacancy rates from March to September. No data is available prior to March on these communities.
* Major apartments under construction include Koury Corp.'s luxury apartments at The Village at North Elm in Greensboro, affordable-housing units on Crouse Lane in Burlington, and the final apartments at Coppermill Village, a southwest Greensboro apartment project being built by Carroll Investment Properties.
* Major planned communities include Carroll's 286-unit project on Pleasant Garden Road at Interstate 85, a number of Signature Properties complexes in southern and southeastern Greensboro, and 288-units being built by Carroll at Battleground Oaks Village in north Greensboro. The majority of units under construction and in planning stages are in northeast and south Greensboro, though there's a good deal of planning going on in northwest Winston-Salem.
* Demand for apartments is up in Burlington, with 164 units under construction and 531 units proposed. The vacancy rate in Burlington is 9.9 percent.
* The vacancy rate in north Greensboro is 6.1 percent.
* The vacancy rate in northeast Greensboro stands at 8.5 percent and is project to climb as new project, including Koury's apartments at the Village, come online.
* The vacancy rate in northwest Greensboro, which has a huge concentration of older apartments, is 5.8 percent.
* South Greensboro saw little change during the past six months, and the vacancy rate there is about 8.3 percent.
* Southeast Greensboro has an overall vacancy rate of 10.8 percent, although communities less than 30-years-old have an average vacancy rate of just 2 percent.
* Southwest Greensboro has seen dramatic improvements in its vacancy rate, which is down to 8 percent after jumping to 16 percent last March.
* The vacancy rate in High Point improved to 8.4 percent, and existing apartments there lowered their rents by $10.71 during the past year.
* Kernersville posted a vacancy rate of 5.8 percent in September, despite a 4 percent hike in rents in the last six months.