Brian Johnson, President of Santa Barbara’s Association of Realtors, is sharing optimistic news as it relates to the area’s multifamily housing market.
Currently, according to CoStar, apartment vacancy in the area stands at 4.4 percent. Demand for apartments remains high, which Johnson notes has kept vacancy numbers compressed, but with the delivery of several new development projects, there is hope that some pressure will be released soon.
“While larger projects from the Towbes Group and John Price in Goleta are in the pipeline we have many smaller projects under way in Santa Barbara that are being built under the Average Unit Density (AUD) program,” Johnson says. “We could see that vacancy level rise slightly, closer to a healthier level for a market our size.”
Rent growth has declined slightly in the region, by .5 percent, over the last year—attributed to property owners offering rent reductions to cope with COVID, and fewer tenants looking to move during the pandemic.
Santa Barbara is also seeing an increase in multifamily investment properties. There have already been five sales of buildings with five or more units along the South Coast of Santa Barbara County so far this year, with two more currently in escrow. When looking at the first quarter of 2020 (largely pre-pandemic), there were only three sales of such properties.