On Thursday, February 26, the CAA held its first General Meeting of 2026 at Ohio Brewing Company featuring what has become tradition for the Association highlighting the annual Industry Forecast with Andrew Mazak of Vogt Strategic Insights.
Laura Swanson, CAA Executive Director welcomed over 90 CAA members in attendance to the meeting and recognized the new members, Hall of Fame members and Past President’s in attendance before turning the meeting over to Chris Rohrbacher, CAA President. Rohrbacher first presented CAA Past President Don Brunner with a crystal gavel as a token of appreciation for his time served as CAA President during the previous term. Then, he introduced Mazak to provide the Industry Forecast.
Mazak began with a basic snapshot of what’s happened in Columbus over the past five years. “Since the pandemic, there have been so many different changes in renter preferences, demographic and economic changes, the work from home; migration away from cities when everything was locked down. We saw a bunch of difference changes in all sorts of different housing type preferences, bedroom preferences and unit types,” Mazak said.
Starting with a table showing inventory change in Columbus, Mazak said it wasn’t surprising that 2025 had the largest number of units coming on the market at just under 5,000 developed in the metro area, bringing more vacancies. The 6.2% rate is not unusually high considering the growth the area has seen.
“The devil is in the details when it comes to what is going to make properties successful in terms of location, amenities, design, features, marketing,” Mazak said. “Asking rents have been stable of the past three years without much growth but also being driven by different submarkets.”
Describing how Columbus compares to other metro cities, Mazak started with a comparison of Columbus to Cleveland and Cincinnati, but also included Indianapolis, Nashville and Charlotte. Using a basic inventory chart to show how many rental housing units have been built in each city. Compared to Cincinnati and Cleveland, Columbus has developed more multifamily housing needing economic growth. Columbus also outgained Indianapolis, but both Charlotte and Nashville saw a greater increase in inventory. With so many units coming online Columbus has seen a lower rent growth, however, Nashville and Charlotte, even with all the new supply, saw rents increasing greater than Ohio cities.
Mazak drilled down to submarkets starting with vacancy rates noting that Whitehall had the lowest at just over one percent. Hilliard, Sharon and Worthington followed, and Dublin and Powell were just under 5%, Delaware north with an 11.4% vacancy rate and downtown/University District had the highest vacancy rate at 12.6%. In following graphics Mazak detailed rent concessions and average asking rents in each submarket demonstrating rent spread across submarkets.
“When we dig a littler deeper, this is a key takeaway for today, that’s the class A product. Over the past five years, since the pandemic, there’s been a lot of development in the pipeline and projects moving forward in 2021 and 2022, interest rates were low and rental rates and median incomes were increasing,” Mazak Said. “A lot of the class A properties were being developed. While the overall downtown vacancy rate is 12.6%, the class A vacancy rate is at 15.3%. There isn’t quite as much of a spread in some of the other markets.”
One of the challenges Columbus has had is the need and opportunity but bringing those products to fruition has been more challenging for various reasons. From economic factors, financing, interest rates, and cost increases. Mazak stated there is a lot of talk about housing and the need for more housing, the challenges for bringing the units online, developing something that makes sense economically and financially while serving the tenant population and be appealing to the market. Revisiting headlines that have touted Columbus from an economic and population growth perspective Mazak addressed the need for more housing.
“But what housing? The devil is in the details. There’s been a lot of product development in the higher end market but there is more of that missing middle, more workforce housing, more class B, B+, even A-, more of that working class, affordable rentals,” Mazak said. “Those haven’t been financially feasible as much as the higher priced class A product so there hasn’t been less of that development.”
In 2025 the market softened a little bit but not much compared to other major metro areas around the country. Columbus has been and has always been resilient. A lot of that is driven by economic opportunities, the education and higher education opportunities that are here, graduating thousands and thousands of young professionals each year looking for jobs. We’re continuing to see projected demographic growth which leads to more housing. There is a continued need for housing, the challenge is what location and what type of housing.
Using a slide from last year’s presentation to outline the projected inventory, there was a projection that there was going to be a lot of inventory coming online in 2026, a 5.2% increase in the overall number of units which is significant compared to the US, the Midwest and other metro areas. What we saw was more than Columbus has seen, but not quite as big as was talked about with those new units, there was only a 2% increase, projecting a 2.6% increase this year. Vacancies are projected to remain stable for the next two years; new units are not expected to increase vacancies. Over the last year there was only .5% rent growth which was less than anticipated and is projected to be 1.6% this year and 2.3% next year.
“Overall, over the next two years the supply will continue, but not quite as significantly as we saw last year. That’s going to help stabilize the projects, maintain the same level of occupancy but be able to push the rents up a little bit,” Mazak said.
Noting what to watch for the future there will be more focus from renters on design and amenities, what’s going to make projects appealing to renters. Some key amenities to consider include the expectation of 3D and virtual tours online. There’s been a rental turn off on dynamic pricing, renters are pushing back and want to see transparent pricing and want to have user friendly application processes, more streamlining to attract and keep residents. Once in the units renters want to see smart applications and technology. Also, community events and options are becoming more prevalent, group fitness, cooking and yoga classes. Those are going to continue to set projects apart. Other community features that have seen increase in demand is overall fitness, health and wellness space, meditation rooms, on-site cafes and community workspaces, rooftop and outdoor spaces are also in demand. Following his presentation Mazak took questions from the audience. Before Swanson returned to the podium. New this year, sponsors have provided gift cards for an attendee drawing. Sponsored by CORT, GoldOller, Redwood and Schottenstein Real Estate gift cards winners were David Holzer, Commercial One Realtors, Deanna Vasquez, Towne Property Management, Cori Wallace, Cortland Partners and Darla Wilson, Towne Property Management. Noelle Smith rounded out the program with encouraging those in the room to attend the Capital Awards ceremony on May 7 at the Columbus Museum of Art. 2026 Industry Forecast Slideshow
