Las Vegas apartment occupancies rose during the first quarter and that helped to increase rents, according to numbers released today by a research firm.
The average rent charged during the first quarter was $761 per unit, up from $756 per unit in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis.
The occupancy rate was 92 percent in the first quarter, up 0.4 percent from 91.6 percent in the fourth quarter. The occupancy rate was 90.6 percent during the first quarter of 2010. It’s the fourth consecutive quarter that the occupancy rate has increased since bottoming out at 90.1 percent at the end of 2009, Applied Analysis reported.
Despite the improvement, the firm isn’t predicting a recovery in the apartment market.
Jake Joyce, a project manager with Applied Analysis, said the high volume of investors buying homes is competition for the apartment market.
Applied Analysis Principal Brian Gordon pointed out that even though average rents rose in the first quarter they are down 2 percent from the first quarter of 2010.
A bright spot is high-end apartments, which have seen their average revenue per unit increase 1.9 percent over the past year, Gordon said.
Overall, the revenue per unit in the first quarter was $700, up 1.1 percent from the fourth quarter but down 0.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.
Gordon said the market is "several years away from reaching back to peak levels that reached an average of $890 per unit."
The highest rent charged in an area of the valley during the first quarter was $919 per unit in the southwest while the northeast had an average of $631 per unit.
The southeast had the highest occupancy rate at 94.6 percent while the northeast had an 89.5 percent occupancy rate.