What ate multifamily NOI. Owners kept about 11 cents of each 2025 rent dollar, and costs grew 4.6 % against revenue of 2.7 %.

Of each 2025 rent dollar, owners kept about 11 cents. Costs grew about 1.7 times as fast as revenue.

The NAA Dollar of Rent analysis follows the same 13,471 communities, about 1.7 million apartments, across 2024 and 2025, so the change is real and not a change in who reports. Monthly revenue per unit grew 2.7 %, from about $1,504 to $1,545. Annual operating cost per unit grew 4.6 %, to $8,213 from $7,848. Of each dollar, 43 cents went to debt service, 27 cents to running the property, 10 cents to property taxes, 7 cents to payroll and 1 cent to reserves.

The longer view comes from the 2024 benchmarks. Same-store income per unit reached $21,017, up 14.1 % from 2021. Over those years repairs and maintenance rose 28.2 %, and the payroll line rose 3.6 % in 2024 alone, which NAA reads as sticky on-site wages. Total taxes and insurance were $2,998 per unit in 2024, up 2.65 % on the year.

Insurance rose fastest, and it is the smallest of the big bills.

In the NAA same-store benchmark, insurance per unit went from $502 in 2021 to $777 in 2024, a 55 % rise: 11 % in 2022, 25 % in 2023, 12 % in 2024. A Federal Reserve note on the same costs finds the average monthly premium per unit rose from $39 in 2019 to $68 in 2024 in real terms, more than 75 percent. The CRED iQ sample of apartment properties shows it larger still: insurance per unit went from $339 to $778 a year from 2019 to 2025, up 129.5 %, while revenue per unit went from $14,210 to $19,292, up 35.8 %. The article’s text gives 115 % and 27 % for the same years; those do not follow from its dollars, so we use the dollars, which agree with its own ratio of $2.39 and $4.02 per $100. How we read the change

It still weighs less than the other lines. Insurance takes $4.02 of every $100 of apartment revenue, up from $2.39 in 2019. Property taxes take 10 cents of the dollar and payroll 7 cents. The Fed note puts the NOI effect at 20 basis points of yield for the 77 % average rise, and finds the cost is borne more by owners than by renters: rents rose $7 to $12 a month on average because of it, under one percent.

Then came a turn. In 2025 revenue grew 1.4 % while insurance costs fell about 2 %; in the Sun Belt insurance fell 7.2 %. CRED iQ’s summary: the spike is over, the higher costs stayed. On the coasts they are still rising.

By metro, the NAA article gives the 2021 to 2024 change for eleven of its 22 same-store markets; we show the ten inside our 24 metros (Oakland, +58 %, sits in the San Francisco metro of the rent index and is not shown). Seattle-Everett rose 93 %, from $512 to $988 per unit. Orlando rose 84 %, Tampa 77 %, Washington 66 %, Houston 57 % to $1,233 per unit, the highest dollar cost among the markets it tracked. Los Angeles and San Diego about 61 %. At the other end Raleigh rose 29 %, Salt Lake City 12 % and Chicago 2 %. NAA is explicit that its chart of insurance against rent growth does not show causation: several high-insurance metros also had strong demand.

Rent outran payroll in 18 of 20 metros through 2023. Insurance took about a fifth of the rent gain in Houston and 6 % in Washington.

We read three series for 24 metros. Rent: the Zillow observed rent index, annual average of monthly values, up 6.7 % in San Francisco and 47.7 % in Miami from 2020 to 2023, the smallest and largest of the 24. Payroll: average annual pay at private firms in real-estate support activities, which includes property managers, in 20 metros where the 2020 figure is published. Insurance: the NAA metro figures for ten metros. The three cover different windows and different counts, so the exhibit shows each on its own terms.

Where both rent and pay can be read, rent growth beat pay growth in 18 of 20 metros from 2020 to 2023. The two exceptions are San Francisco (rent 6.7 %, pay 9.9 %) and Minneapolis (10.8 %, 13.7 %). The median across the metros is 24.9 % for rent and 15.0 % for pay. In the years of fast rent growth, payroll could not be what took the NOI.

Set insurance against rent in dollars for the four metros where NAA gives both ends. From 2021 to 2024 Houston’s insurance rose by $449 per unit a year against a rent rise of about $2,292 a year, so insurance took about 20 % of the gain. Seattle: $476 against $3,564, 13 %. Tampa: $329 against $4,320, 8 %. Washington: $247 against $4,188, 6 %. The share was largest in Houston, where the rent rise was the smallest of the four. How the dollars are set side by side

Property taxes are the gap. They are 10 cents of the dollar nationally, and NAA notes that in 2024 real estate taxes slightly moderated, that Austin’s expenses fell on lower advertising and real estate taxes and Tampa’s on reduced taxes and utility costs. No free source gives multifamily property taxes by metro, so the exhibit has no tax column. Why we left it blank

What to do with this

If you underwrite apartments: do not carry one growth rate for all expenses. Insurance, taxes and payroll moved on different clocks, and the rent that covered them from 2020 to 2023 has slowed: revenue grew 1.4 % in 2025 in the CRED iQ sample and revenue per unit 2.7 % in the NAA same-store set. Re-run the operating statement line by line, and set each line against the metro it sits in.

Titleman reads an offering memorandum and its operating statement, and returns the lines that look out of pattern, the questions for the seller, and the expense growth a lender would test. This review is the kind of benchmark it reads them against.