San Antonio apartments growing in size while others shrink

San Antonio apartments are growing more spacious, bucking national trends.

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.

• But San Antonio’s growing apartment size average is in line with the South, where square footage is actually increasing.

By the numbers: The average size of newer San Antonio apartments is 901 square feet, 1.6% bigger than the 2022 national average of 887 square feet, per a new report from listing service RentCafe.

Yes, but: We by no means have the largest new apartments. That honor goes to Tallahassee, Florida, with its average at 1,182 square feet.

• The only Texas city to rank in the top 15 largest new apartment sizes was Lubbock, with an average of 1,055 square feet.
• We're smack dab in the middle, with San Antonio ranking 49th among the 100 reviewed metro areas.

The big picture: Nationwide, newly built apartments in 2022 shed 30 square feet on average compared to 2021, per the report.

• That sharp 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.

Case in point: 57% of apartments completed last year were small units across the U.S.

Of note: At the local level, researchers considered apartments built between 2013 and 2022.

What we're watching: Apartments under construction. As the market keeps fluctuating post-pandemic, their size could signal whether the trend of bigger San Antonio rentals will stick.