For seven years, most metropolitan areas experienced an apartment boom characterized by increasing rents and a lot of deliveries. Demand for urban rental properties kept up with the number of units coming to market.

But signs are clear that this is coming to an end. Negative rent growth during Q4 2016 in markets including Houston, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area led to rent moderation at the end of 2016, according to apartment research firm Axiometrics. And landlords are going to slash rents and offer deeper concessions in 2017.

The slowdown is because of high supply, said to MPF Research’s Jay Parsons. Though more than 50,000 new units were rented in Q4 2016, 88,000 units delivered, the most since the mid-1980s, according to MPF metrics. Meanwhile, Axiometrics is forecasting that 378,000 new units will come to market in 2017, almost 35% more than the 20-year average.

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