The 3 U.S. cities where new rental apartments have shrunk—NYC isn't one of them

Unfortunately for flat dwellers, the walls whitethorn consciousness similar they're closing in. The mean size of caller apartments successful 2022 was 30 quadrate feet smaller than the twelvemonth before, the sharpest driblet successful the past 10 years, according to a caller survey from RentCafe.com.

The stock of one-bedroom and workplace apartments grew to 57% of caller apartments successful 2022, up from precisely fractional of caller builds 10 years ago. That's portion of wherefore the mean size of each apartments has shrunk.

While RentCafe recovered three-bedroom units grew by 15 quadrate feet successful the past year, the mean size of two-bedroom, one-bedroom, and workplace units each fell by astatine slightest 10 quadrate feet. 

RentCafe utilized information from its marketplace quality sister website, Yardi Matrix, to analyse however quadrate footage has changed successful the 100 U.S. cities with the largest banal of apartments. 

Though nationally, apartments person shrunk implicit the past 10 years, not each flat dwellers are feeling the pinch. Here are the cities wherever flat sizes person changed the most.

New Yorkers whitethorn beryllium the archetypal to archer you however tiny their surviving spaces are. Three of the city's 5 boroughs — Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan — number among the 5 cities with the smallest caller apartments overall.

Seattle's mean 689-square-foot apartments gain the favoritism of being the smallest successful the country. Luckily, that's not wherever caller lodging size is shrinking fastest.

Apartments successful Silver Spring, Maryland, decreased by the astir square-feet (114) implicit the past 10 years. Decatur, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama, travel closely, with caller pads losing 100 and 96 square-feet each, respectively.

These are the 15 cities wherever the mean caller flat size has decreased the astir implicit the past 10 years:

If you privation to spell big, spell South. According to RentCafe's analysis, 11 of the 15 cities with the largest mean caller flat size are successful that region, led by Tallahassee and Gainesville, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama.

But cities wherever caller apartments person grown the astir implicit the past 10 years are sprinkled passim the country. Tucson, Arizona, leads, the pack, and its caller apartments beats the adjacent city's — Tallahassee, Florida's — maturation by implicit 100 quadrate feet.

The mean caller flat size grew the astir successful these 15 cities: 

Finding a bigger location if you consciousness cramped is not ever feasible, fixed the country's current lodging shortage and the information that much abstraction often means a overmuch higher rent.

If you're consenting to move, you whitethorn beryllium capable to get much abstraction for little wealth successful a antithetic lodging market. The mean flat successful Brooklyn is simply a choky 692 square-feet and costs a median $2,109 per period according to Apartment List, compared with the mean 805 square-foot apartments successful Salt Lake City that rent for a median $1,319.