Asking Rent Trends - An Update On Spring Leasing Trends

Research evidence excerpt

Asking Rent Trends - An Update On Spring Leasing Trends

Real Estate | Residential

May 11, 2026

Steve Sakwa Asking Rent Trends - An Update On Spring

212-446-9462

Steve.Sakwa@evercoreisi.com Leasing Trends

Manus Ebbecke, CFA Given the big bounce in apartment stocks following Q1 prints,

212-812-2910 investors are glued to the near-term trends in new lease growth

Manus.Ebbecke@evercoreisi.com as this remains the biggest swing factor in performance over the

next few quarters. As a result, we updated our new lease rent

data from Co-Star and the charts inside the note center on the

following trends:

1. Updated data series on daily asking rent psf from Co-Star

shows the trends over the past 6 months for the large

apartment REITs (AVB, CPT, ESS, EQR, MAA & UDR).

Trends remain constructive for EQR, ESS & AVB and less

constructive for MAA while UDR’s trend has clearly shown

positive momentum since early April which is consistent with

commentary on its Q1 conf call. It’s worth remembering that

companies can toggle between occupancy gains and new

rent growth so investors need to keep this in mind as they

track and data and think about Q2 prints in late July.

2. Updated charts show the seasonal trends in rents for 2026

vs. 2025. With Spring leasing season underway, new

leasing trends remain stronger for coastal apartment REITs

vs. Sunbelt focused companies despite stable job growth

while new supply continues to create a drag on new

customer rent growth especially in some of the Sunbelt

markets.

3. The final set of charts overlay the Co-Star asking rent data

by quarter vs the reported new lease spreads for each

company. Except for AVB, due to a shorter time series, the

correlations between these two series range from 88% to

95% using data going back to 2020.