Austin, TX Multifamily Market Report Q3 2026

Vacancy Falls to 11.8%; 2024 Delivery Peak Fades

Demand

Austin absorbed 6,925 units in Q3 2026, against 5,796 in the same quarter last year. Vacancy is 11.8%, 248 bps tighter than Q3 2025. Lake Travis is the tightest submarket at 6.4% vacancy; Caldwell County leads rent growth at +5.3%. Trailing-12-month absorption of 21,237 units matched the prior 12 months (21,279).

Supply

Austin recorded 5,727 units of completions in Q3 and 14,825 over the trailing twelve months (-24% versus the prior TTM period). Units under construction equal 3.9% of inventory, concentrated in Bastrop County at 14.1% of its stock. Annual completions peaked at 32,074 units in 2024. The 13,543-unit pipeline equals about two and a half quarters of absorption at the trailing pace.

Investment Market

Austin recorded $0.4B in sales over the trailing twelve months, -43% against the prior TTM period; Q3 accounted for $87M. The high-water mark in this series is $4.0B in 2021. Volume is CoStar only. RCA records $1.86B for Q3, 2.1 times its prior four-quarter average, which likely reflects entity-level activity from the AvalonBay and Equity Residential merger. CoStar counts priced deals only (2 of 19 Q3 transactions). Read volume as directional.

Austin cap rates average 5.74%, up for 19 straight quarters. Pricing sits at $221k per unit, lower for 4 consecutive years.