📍 Top trending cities ahead of the 2026 rental season

👋 Happy Sunday, Best Ever readers! If you’re in the path of the storm in the Northeast, stay warm and stay safe!

In today’s newsletter, a Midwest city takes the crown, SCOTUS speaks, Trump targets investors, demand shifts upmarket, and much more.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

⚖️ SCOTUS Speaks: The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, has struck down Trump's use of a 1977 emergency law to impose tariffs, prompting the president to pivot to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to enact a new 10% global tariff within three days.

🏠 Portfolio Freeze: The White House has proposed banning investors owning more than 100 single-family homes from purchasing additional properties, a threshold expected to affect hundreds of firms — far stricter than the 1,000-home floor many investors had anticipated.

🏘️ Housing Aid Threat: HUD has proposed requiring every member of a household to prove legal immigration status to qualify for federal housing assistance, a rule change that advocates project could result in more than 100,000 evictions, including 37,000 children.

🏦 Rate Hold: Fed minutes have revealed most officials are not prepared to cut rates in the near term, citing persistent inflation risks, with some members leaving the door open to future hikes if price pressures remain above the 2% target.

🏭 Doubling Down: Major institutional investors have doubled down on industrial real estate, as net lease industrial assets have grown to 53% of the $58 billion annual net lease market — up from 29% in 2015 — driven by e-commerce growth and aging warehouse inventory.

🏆 TOP STORY
TOP TRENDING CITIES FOR THE 2026 RENTAL SEASON

Forget Miami. Forget Austin. The hottest rental market heading into 2026 is in Ohio — and it's not even close. Cincinnati has jumped to No. 1 on RentCafe's annual ranking of the 30 most in-demand U.S. rental markets, based on apartment searches, saved listings, and favorited properties. The city climbed 10 spots from last year, with listings added to favorites surging 81% — a reflection of renters fleeing high-cost coastal metros for mid-sized cities with strong job markets, lower costs, and revitalized downtowns.

Cincinnati isn't alone. The Midwest claimed 11 of the 30 most in-demand cities, more than any other region — a shift that should have multifamily investors rethinking their market maps.

• Atlanta and Minneapolis aren't far behind Cincinnati. Atlanta held firm at No. 2 despite tightening inventory, ranking second for total listings added to favorites, while Minneapolis climbed four spots to No. 3 as renters narrowed choices faster — favorites up 29% YoY. Both cities share a common thread: diversified economies anchoring steady demand from young professionals and early-career workers.

• Baltimore is the top 10's biggest mover. The city jumped 17 spots to No. 5, with page views up 73% and favorites rising 65%, driven by its growing appeal as an affordable alternative to Washington, D.C. San Jose made an even larger leap overall — climbing 80 spots to No. 7 — as its newer mixed-use districts and tech-hub identity pulled renters who might have otherwise chosen the suburbs.

• El Paso is the ranking's most striking outlier. The West Texas city surged 115 spots to No. 28, the largest single-year climb in the entire report — a signal that renter interest is pushing deeper into affordable, undersupplied markets that rarely make national headlines.

Washington, D.C., slipped three spots to No. 4, though demand remains structurally stable. The capital's revolving door of federal workers, contractors, and embassy staff ensures a consistent baseline of rental activity regardless of broader market shifts.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The geographic shift in renter demand has real implications for multifamily investors still anchored to coastal and Sun Belt assumptions. Affordable Midwestern markets with diversifying economies are drawing sustained, early-season engagement, not just casual browsing. Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Kansas City aren't emerging markets anymore. For GPs scouting 2026 acquisitions, the RentCafe data offers an early look at where organic demand is already building before summer even arrives.

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💰 CRE TRENDS
WHY APARTMENT DEMAND IS SHIFTING UPMARKET

The apartment market's demand story isn't playing out where most people expect it to. Over the past three years, renter households in upper-tier apartments have grown by 1.1 million, while mid-tier units added 263,000 renters and lower-tier apartments actually lost a net 70,000.

The driving force isn't immigration policy, which gets floated as an explanation. That lower-tier move-out trend traces back to 2022–23. The real culprit is supply, Jay Parsons writes, and its downstream effects on affordability.

New apartment deliveries in 2023, 2024, and 2025 hit the highest levels since the 1970s, nearly all of them Class A. That flood of new supply pushed rents down and drove concessions up. At the same time, wage growth outpaced rent growth for more than three consecutive years, pulling rent-to-income ratios back to pre-2020 norms. The result:

• Upper-tier units became relatively more affordable, pulling higher-income renters upmarket.

• Mid-tier rents dropped in many markets, opening access to more working-class households.

• Higher-income renters vacating lower-cost units created availability and downward rent pressure at the bottom — Class C rents have fallen even more than Class A in high-supply markets like Austin.

That last dynamic is the "filtering" effect, and it takes time. More than 20% of renter households earn under $20,000 annually — a group that needs rents below $500/month to be cost-burdened, a threshold most properties can't hit without operating at a loss. As new completions taper and concessions dry up, the conversation will shift quickly from surplus to shortage.

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🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
HOW TO BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING WITHOUT GOV’T HELP

For most affordable housing developers, the math doesn't work without a stack of government subsidies, tax credits, and the patience for bureaucratic timelines measured in years. Michael Oden decided to skip all of that.

Oden, a broker-developer and founder of the Affordify Housing Fund, joined John Casmon on the Best Ever CRE Show this week to break down how he's delivering new construction homes priced at $375,000 and below across Metro Atlanta — no LIHTC, no income restrictions, no grant applications — and still generating returns that have family offices and retired NFL players calling him for the next deal.

The framework comes down to three cost controls he executes before a single foundation is poured:

• Land basis is everything. Oden bought a lot in December for $65,000 that zoning allows him to develop into six units — dropping his per-unit land basis to roughly $10,000. "With zoning, you can unlock additional value that then enables your basis to go much lower," he said. "So when you add on your construction costs, the deal still pencils."

• Keep it small. Every project comes in at 1,300 SF or below. He put three homes on the market in January — all went under contract quickly. One buyer thought the 1,221 SF layout was actually larger than the 1,300 SF unit. Smart design matters as much as square footage.

• Don't over-spec. Oden's contractor warehouses materials in bulk — appliances, doors, lighting, plumbing trim — and passes the savings along. Skipping the HGTV finishes keeps costs in line without sacrificing quality.

Oden’s current pipeline includes over 60 lots across Metro Atlanta, with a $500,000 equity raise underway for an eight-home project projecting 30% returns to investors within 18 months. For multifamily investors convinced that affordable housing only works with government handcuffs, Oden's model is worth a closer look — it's replicable in any market where zoning knowledge creates density that raw lot prices don't reflect.

🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.