Now more than ever, people want and need apartments. If you’ve tuned into the news for the past two years, it is not a buyer’s market for a home right now. Millennials are less interested in home ownership than previous generations, and growing student loan debt only contributes to the increasing demand for rental housing.
With 2021 breaking decades-long records for apartment demand, 2022 has started off on the right foot. In spite of supply chain issues and rampant inflation, apartment demand sustained its growth trajectory in the first quarter of 2022, according to the National Apartment Association. This is a good sign for the industry as we head into the busy summer season.
This growth is also reflected in Google searches, another good indicator of apartment demand. If someone is looking for an apartment, you can bet a search engine will play a vital role in their purchase journey. This article looks at some of the broader searches for apartments over the last couple of years and analyzes trends.
Searches for “Apartments”
The broadest and most-searched query for apartments is simply the word “apartments,” which averaged 6,120,000 searches across the United States in May 2022 alone. This query’s popularity aligns with seasonal trends. As warm weather approaches, so do Google searches for apartments. The first week of May 2021 is where demand peaked during last year, and the first part of 2022 has shown comparable results. Covid 2020 had a big impact on this query with its peak warm-weather season noticeably lower than the other three years present in the graph.
Top Five Cities by Apartment Interest in 2022:
- Memphis
- San Antonio
- Dallas-Ft. Worth
- Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News
- Houston
Searches for “Luxury Apartments”
US interest in luxury apartments meddled in 2019 but grew significantly over the next two years. After reaching a milestone in April 2021 in terms of interest it actually peaked in July 2021. Interest in luxury apartments in 2022 so far, while still performing well, is not replicating last year’s pace at this time.
Top Cities For Luxury Apartment Interest in 2022:
- Houston
- Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News
- Tucson
- Gainesville
- Baltimore
Searches for Apartments by Room Number and Type
Historically studio and one-bedroom apartments garnered the most search interest in the US, but that gap has closed in 2021 and actually inverted some in 2022. This inversion happens because studio apartment interest has dipped so far in 2022.
On the flip side, we’ve seen townhome searches and one-bedroom apartment searches begin to outperform studio apartment searches. Interest in one-bedroom apartment searches are still performing well in 2022 but coming in slightly under townhomes. Is 2022 the year of the townhome?
Interest for apartments has continued to rise across the US throughout the last several years. The keyword data supports these trends, and if the current 2022 trend continues, this year will also be a strong year for apartments. Overall, 2021 outperformed every other year since 2019, but 2022 is performing strong going into the busy summer season.
With search demand for apartments near all-time highs, is your property’s website optimized to catch that traffic? Do you know how renters are searching for properties in your area? Is your site’s content talking about the surrounding communities in a way that makes it locally relevant? Contact us if you are unsure about your answers to any of those questions, or request a free marketing analysis from our teams today.