Hiding in Plain Sight – August 3, 2026

There’s another region of the U.S. with apartment fundamentals that rival the Sunbelt–and it’s not where you might think

When the subject of regional multifamily strongholds comes up, naturally the first region that comes to mind is the Sunbelt. Some investors would add coastal markets, and the Midwest has emerged as a powerhouse in recent years due to steady rent growth and (comparatively) limited development. 

The team at Graceada Partners believes there’s another swath of the U.S. where apartment performance rivals that of Sunbelt markets. Yet from the standpoint of institutional players, the region has been under-recognized on the whole, although a few of its largest cities draw investors’ attention. It’s the Inland West, home to 47.3 million Americans and a trove of secondary and tertiary markets, including 10 of the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas. 

The Inland West encompasses all or part of 11 states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming in full, along with the 39 inland counties of California and the 36 counties of Washington outside metropolitan Seattle. Yes, California, Oregon and Washington are considered coastal markets, but the market dynamics within these states change when you move inland from the actual Pacific coastline. 

“Splitting California and Washington is not a statistical adjustment; it reflects how those states work,” the Graceada team writes in a new white paper, Equal Footing | The Inland West and the Southeast.  

Markets such as Los Angeles and Seattle represent “a different economy: older, far more expensive, more volatile through cycles, driven by technology wages and global capital,” the white paper states. “The inland counties are younger, more affordable, gaining the households the coast loses, and built on logistics, agriculture, manufacturing, and services.  

“On the dimensions that drive real estate demand, Fresno, Bakersfield and Spokane behave like Boise and Phoenix, not like San Francisco and Seattle. So we measure them with the region they belong to.” 

The Graceada team has operated in the Inland West since the Modesto, CA-based investment firm’s founding in 2008. “Over that time, we have watched it exhibit the same demographic components that made the Southeast a consensus allocation — sustained in-migration, a young population, income convergence, employment growth ahead of the nation — without the research coverage that would make those facts legible to institutional capital. So we built the comparison ourselves: the same metrics, over the same 21 years, from the same federal sources, measured on the geography the region actually occupies.” 

Arguing that Florida represents an entirely different market compared to, say, Georgia and Tennessee, Graceada omits it from the head-to-head comparison between the Inland West and the Southeast. This also puts the two regions’ populations on more equitable footing: the Southeastern states have a combined population of 49 million, comparable with the total for the Inland West region. 

Where the Inland West outpaces the Southeast is, surprisingly, in growth metrics. Between 2003 and 2024, the Inland West grew faster than the Southeast on a compounded annual basis in terms of population, per-capita personal income, real GDP and employment. With the exception of personal income, where the Southeast lags, both regions outpace the nation as a whole over that period. 

Conversely, both regions lag the U.S. for average income. However, the gap has been closing  over the years, and not in favor of the Southeast. ” In 2003, the Southeast sat closer to national income (92.6% of US) than the Inland West (88.8%),” the white paper states. “By 2024, the positions had reversed: 91.3% versus 89.8%.” 

The point of this white paper isn’t to denigrate any investment theses that favor higher-visibility markets. There are many strong arguments to be made in favor of investing in the Carolinas—and for that matter, in New York City and LA. Rather, it’s to raise awareness of a region that offers many opportunities—provided the region is properly understood.