Asking Rent Trends - How's Spring Leasing Progressing?

Research evidence excerpt

Asking Rent Trends - How's Spring Leasing Progressing?

Real Estate | Residential

May 25, 2026

Steve Sakwa Asking Rent Trends - How's Spring Leasing

212-446-9462

Steve.Sakwa@evercoreisi.com Progressing?

Manus Ebbecke, CFA While the big news in Apartment-land last week was the AVB &

212-812-2910 EQR merger announcement, the focus for investors now turns

Manus.Ebbecke@evercoreisi.com to NAREIT (June 2-3) and the pace of new rent growth during

the all-important Spring leasing season. Given that apartment

stocks continue to lag the REIT sector YTD, an acceleration in

new rent growth could have an outsized impact on stocks.

Therefore, we’ve 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 & UDR while

AVB’s new lease growth seems to have “flattened out” very

recently while the trends are less constructive for MAA. With

that said, we realize that companies can toggle between

occupancy gains and new rent growth so it’s important to

keep this in mind as investors track and data and think about

the NAREIT updates and ultimately the Q2 prints in late July.

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

vs. 2025. With Spring leasing season well underway, it will

be interesting to see if there is an abrupt end to the peak or

whether it extends longer than last year which would be

good for apartment landlords. From a geographic

standpoint, coastal apartment REITs continue to post

favorable trends vs. their Sunbelt peers as elevated

deliveries continues to create a drag on new customer rent

growth.

3.