Apartment Occupancy by Families With Children Continues to Grow in S.A.

 If you wonder why everywhere you look you see brand new apartment buildings going up, this may be the reason why, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

A study by the on line firm 'Rent Cafe' shows between 2006 and 2016, San Antonio saw a surge of 28,000 more families move into rental properties, representing a 33% surge in rental demand by families with children.

During the same period, only 6,000 more families with children bought their own home, an increase of about 3%.

The reasons are not hard for any homeowner looking at the latest Bexar Appraisal Notice to figure out.  The price of a single family home in San Antonio has risen by 29% just in the last five years.  Rents are up too, but by a much more manageable 20%.

That means apartment complexes are changing to deal with the new reality.

Throughout the eighties, nineties, and early 2000s, apartments were mainly occupied by single people, retirees, and couples without children.  But Rent Cafe reports San Antonio is leading the move by families into apartments, so 51% of the apartments which have been built over the past ten years in the San Antonio metro have been family sized, meaning two bedrooms or more.  That is a much higher percentage of family sized apartments in either Houston or Dallas Ft. Worth.

Rent Cafe says there is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue, so expect to see more new apartment complexes in your neighborhood.

In fact, Rent Cafe reports since the housing crisis of 2008, 1.1 million new apartments have been constructed nationwide.  

This at a time when several factors, from the rising cost of land to the difficulty of attracting skilled construction workers, to higher fees imposed by municipalities, have severely constricted the number of new homes, especially affordable homes, which have been constructed.

IMAGE; GETTY

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