The Peak Is Behind Us and Pressure Is Building

Every once in a while, a chart tells a story more clearly than words ever could. At last week’s Yardi Matrix economic outlook with Jeff Adler, one slide captured the future of our industry in a single image. It showed 2024 as the high point of multifamily completions and then a sharp decline through 2027.

The data didn’t just apply to market-rate apartments. Affordable housing, student housing, and senior housing were all headed in the same direction. The message was unmistakable: we are past the peak, and supply is about to contract just as demand remains stubbornly high.

For those of us who have been in this business long enough, forecasts like these don’t feel abstract. They’re warnings. They tell us that the operational and policy challenges we wrestle with daily are about to get harder, not easier.

Why This Matters

Housing demand isn’t shrinking. Households are still forming. Young adults are still moving out on their own. Families are still looking for stability. Seniors are still searching for affordability and accessibility. What is shrinking is the supply pipeline.

When supply drops but demand continues, the outcomes are predictable: higher rents, constrained mobility, and more pressure on affordable housing providers. And while those outcomes show up first in headlines and rent reports, they hit hardest on the ground at the leasing offices, compliance desks, and maintenance shops where frontline teams are already stretched thin.

I’ve seen this pattern before. During the last construction slowdown, properties became pressure cookers. Residents struggled to find alternatives, so turnover decreased but not always for positive reasons. People stayed because they had no choice, not because they were satisfied. Operators found themselves navigating increased resident stress, higher service expectations, and tighter margins, all while the development pipeline sat idle.

Barriers That Don’t Have to Be There

One of the most frustrating realities of multifamily housing is how much time and money get lost in processes that add little value. Permitting delays that stretch projects out for years. Zoning restrictions that keep density artificially low. Tax credit reviews that get bogged down in bureaucracy.

I’ve walked projects that should have been open and serving families long before they did. I’ve sat in meetings where we debated compliance minutiae while construction costs ticked upward by the day. Each delay not only inflates cost it widens the gap between need and supply.

For affordable housing, those delays can be fatal. Thin margins can’t absorb extra years of holding costs or rising interest rates. Deals that might have worked at one moment collapse under the weight of time. And every project that fails to break ground is another community that misses out on desperately needed homes.

The Human Impact

When we talk about supply and demand, it’s easy to drift into abstractions. But for those of us who lead operations, the consequences show up in very real ways.

I think about the site teams I’ve led who field calls from families desperate for an apartment when the waitlist is already years long. I think about the maintenance staff trying to hold aging properties together because reinvestment has been deferred while margins are squeezed. I think about the regional managers who spend their days balancing compliance, budgets, and staffing in an environment where every choice feels like a tradeoff.

Burnout is not just a risk for residents who can’t find housing. It’s a risk for the people trying to operate housing when the system feels stacked against them. As completions slow and demand rises, that pressure will only intensify.

What Needs to Change

The good news is that the solutions aren’t mysterious. We know the levers. We’ve seen them work in cities and states willing to experiment. What’s missing is urgency and alignment.

First, we need to streamline permitting. Every unnecessary delay adds cost and risk. Technology, standardized processes, and firm timelines can all help projects move from concept to keys faster.

Second, zoning flexibility must expand. Restrictive land use rules keep communities from meeting their own housing needs. Allowing more density, more mixed use projects, and more creative approaches to design is essential if we want to align supply with demand.

Third, tax credit reviews must speed up. Affordable projects live or die by timing. Streamlining reviews, clarifying requirements, and reducing redundancy can keep deals viable and communities growing.

Finally, we must invest in the people running the properties. No matter how much we build, properties don’t succeed without strong operators. That means training, staffing, and support for the frontline teams who turn buildings into communities.

A Call for Bold Collaboration

None of this can be solved in silos. Developers alone can’t shoulder the costs. Operators alone can’t absorb the pressure. Policymakers alone can’t wave a magic wand. Progress requires collaboration across public agencies, private developers, nonprofit operators, and advocates.

That collaboration has to move beyond statements of intent. It has to show up in how budgets are written, how processes are designed, and how resources are allocated. The data from Yardi Matrix isn’t just a forecast it’s a roadmap showing us where the bottlenecks will tighten if we fail to act.

Shaping the Future, Not Reacting to It

In leadership, one of the hardest lessons is that waiting rarely improves the situation. In property management, ignoring a maintenance issue doesn’t make it cheaper. In development, delaying a decision doesn’t make the pro forma work better. And in housing policy, letting reality outrun regulation doesn’t create stability it creates crisis.

The slowdown in completions is coming. The demand is already here. The only question is whether we will allow the gap to widen unchecked, or whether we will take the opportunity to remove barriers and build smarter.

For me, the takeaway from that chart at YASC was clear. We can’t afford to let policy lag behind reality. The peak is behind us, and the pressure is building. Now is the moment to act not just to predict the future, but to shape it.