New apartments built in Raleigh have gotten smaller over the past decade, even as renters are paying hundreds of dollars more each month to live in them. Raleigh’s average new apartment size fell by 21 square feet since 2016, landing at 930 square feet, while the average apartment rent in the city climbed to $1,683 a month, an increase of $544 over the same 10-year span.
That combination — shrinking space, rising cost — puts Raleigh at odds with most of the country. According to Axios, the typical new apartment across 100 cities studied by RentCafe actually grew by 13 square feet between 2016 and 2025, a little over 1%, continuing an upward trend in national average apartment size that has held since 2022. Raleigh moved in the opposite direction, with RentCafe reporting that the city’s average new apartment size shrank even as renters here ended up paying more for less room, not less.
Raleigh’s decline is real but modest compared to the extremes recorded elsewhere in RentCafe’s national survey. Boston posted the steepest decadal drop among major cities, shrinking 90 square feet to an average of 747 square feet, according to a review by Multifamily Executive. Seattle remained the smallest market overall at 645 square feet, while Tallahassee, Florida boasted the largest new units studied at 1,156 square feet.
Why Developers Are Building Smaller
The shift toward smaller floor plans is not necessarily a sign that renters are getting a worse deal, according to RentCafe senior research analyst Veronica Grecu, whose comments were cited by Boston Agent Magazine. Grecu noted that developers in high-demand markets deliberately prioritize studios and one-bedrooms to maximize the number of units they can deliver and to cater to smaller, single-person households, rather than simply cutting corners on space…