Apartments are getting bigger in Houston

Apartments in the Bayou City are getting bigger.

Why it matters: Apartment sizes are shrinking nationally, a reversal in the rental market that saw units get bigger during the early part of the work-from-home era.

By the numbers: The average size of newer Houston apartments is 923 square feet, 4.1% bigger than the 2022 national average of 887 square feet, per a new report from listing service RentCafe.

The big picture: Nationwide, newly built apartments shed 30 square feet on average compared to 2021, per the report.

• That decrease was fueled in part by more studios and one-bedroom apartments entering the market, researchers found, analyzing the 100 metro areas with the most high-density units.

Flashback: In 2020 and 2021, demand for more space resulted in larger unit configurations, RentCafe analyst Adina Dragos tells Axios.

• "Fast-forward to 2022, the demand for more apartments prompted developers to accommodate more units in their projects," Dragos says.

What we're watching: Apartments under construction, and whether Houston will start to follow the national trend of smaller footprints or if our apartments will continue to have higher square footage.