Rental Housing Weekly Briefing: July 6–10, 2026

This week’s Rental Housing Weekly Briefing examines NMHC’s June 2026 Quarterly Survey of Apartment Construction & Development Activity, which shows a multifamily development market that remains broadly stable but constrained, alongside the June jobs report, which points to renewed labor market softness and a still-restrictive interest rate outlook for rental housing, and the key data releases to watch in the week ahead.

LAST WEEK in RENTAL HOUSING

NMHC Quarterly Survey of Apartment Construction & Development Activity

Multifamily construction activity appears broadly stable, though not accelerating. According to NMHC’s June 2026 Quarterly Survey of Apartment Construction & Development Activity, 55% of respondents said multifamily starts were relatively unchanged from three months earlier, while 22% reported more starts and 20% reported fewer starts.
The data point to a development market still shaped by feasibility constraints. Among firms reporting fewer starts, the most common reason was that projects are not economically feasible at this time, followed by economic uncertainty, low rent growth, and the availability or cost of construction financing. The pullback was most commonly reported in the Southeast, Texas, and Rockies regions.
Construction delays are no longer the primary pressure point. For projects already underway, only 3% of respondents reported more delays than three months earlier, while 63% reported unchanged delays and 20% reported fewer delays. At the same time, 57% of respondents said jurisdictions are imposing additional project requirements unrelated to actual construction, suggesting that entitlement and regulatory friction remain part of the development backdrop.
Cost conditions are mixed, with labor appearing more stable than materials. Two-thirds of respondents said labor costs were rising roughly in line with inflation, while 50% said the same for material costs. However, the share reporting material costs rising faster than inflation more than doubled from March to June, rising from 10% to 22%.
The forward-looking picture is cautiously constructive, but still restrained. Over the next 6–12 months, 46% of respondents expect multifamily construction conditions to improve, compared with 14% expecting conditions to decline. That optimism appears tied partly to expectations for improved capital availability, with 51% expecting equity financing and 28% expecting debt financing to become more available over the same period. Still, starts remain muted, more than half of respondents have repriced projects recently, and cost pressures remain a constraint.

June 2026 Jobs Report

The June jobs report pointed to renewed labor market softness. US employers added just 57,000 jobs in June, well below consensus expectations and the softest monthly gain since December. Revisions to April and May reduced prior estimates by a combined 74,000 jobs, bringing the 12-month average monthly gain down to just 36,000.
The unemployment rate edged down to 4.2%, but the improvement was less encouraging than the headline suggests. The decline was driven largely by a drop in labor force participation, which fell to 61.5%, rather than by a stronger expansion in employment. Wage growth remained moderate, with average hourly earnings rising 0.3% month-over-month and 3.5% year-over-year.
Sector-level detail was mixed, with important implications for renter income conditions. Professional and business services, social assistance, and health care accounted for most of the job gains, while leisure and hospitality shed 61,000 jobs amid weaker-than-usual seasonal hiring. Since leisure and hospitality employs a disproportionate share of lower- and middle-income renters, continued weakness in that sector could pressure rent collection performance.
The report modestly softened interest-rate expectations, but not enough to change the broader financing backdrop. After the release, the market-implied probability of a July Fed rate hike fell from 28.9% to 19.8%, while the chance of higher rates by year-end 2026 fell from 83.3% to 77.9%. For rental housing, that points to a mixed outlook: softer job growth could weigh on renter cash flow, while lower Treasury yields may offer some incremental financing relief, though the Fed’s recently more hawkish posture limits how much relief the market can reasonably expect.