Where development still pencils in 2027. On the rent a typical home lets for, a new apartment building clears its exit yield in none of 18 big metros.

At the typical rent a new unit yields 2.1 % to 4.9 % on cost. None of the 18 clears a 5.25 % exit yield.

Yield on cost is the first test a developer runs: the net operating income of the finished building divided by everything it cost to build. If it is not above the yield at which the building would sell, the project destroys value on the day it is done. We took the RLB multi-family hard cost range for each of 18 cities, the FHFA land value per acre of the metro, the Zillow typical rent and SOFR, and built one unit the same way everywhere. How we built the unit

The answer runs from 4.85 % in Miami and 4.02 % in New York to 2.21 % in Las Vegas and 2.10 % in Portland; the median of the 18 is 2.93 %. The CBRE survey puts stabilized multifamily in New York at 5 % to 5.5 % in H1 2026, up from 4.5 % to 5 % in H2 2025, and the all-property average near 6.6 %. On those numbers no metro is a build at the middle of the cost range.

Tap a band below to see its metros, what a unit costs and what the typical home lets for.

The typical rent is not the rent of a new building. The Zillow index measures the middle of the rental market, old and new stock, houses and apartments. A new building in a good location leases above it, and that premium is the whole question; Part 3 lets you set it. How we built the unit

Land is a median 4 % of the cost and the loan about 4 %. The hard cost is two thirds to three quarters.

A unit costs $359,501 in Dallas, $386,899 in Miami, $623,939 in New York and $956,520 in San Francisco, all in. The hard cost, 1,125 square feet at the middle of the RLB range, is 65.9 % of it in San Francisco and 76.0 % in Charlotte. RLB’s national cost index stood at 292.28 in July 2026, 4.45 % above a year earlier, with 1.28 % in the quarter, the biggest quarterly rise in two years.

Land is a small part of the cost. At 60 units an acre, land runs from 1.0 % of the cost in Charlotte and 1.2 % in Nashville to 12.2 % in Los Angeles and 13.7 % in San Francisco; the median is 4.2 %. Free land would lift Miami from 4.85 % to 5.17 %, New York to 4.44 %, Portland to 2.18 %. What the land figure is

The construction loan, 60 % of cost at SOFR plus three points for two years, is about 4 % of the cost. SOFR at 3.92 % one point lower or higher moves Miami’s yield to 4.88 % or 4.82 %. The rate matters to a developer through the exit yield, not through the interest during construction.

Switch the views to compare metros. The typical rent rose 15.7 % in Austin and 57.4 % in Miami between September 2019 and September 2026, a median of 30.7 %.

What it means for a lender. A construction loan sized on land value is sized on the smallest line of the budget. The test is the rent the building must get above the typical rent of its metro: 39.2 % in Miami, 68.0 % in New York and 220.8 % in Portland for 6.75 % on cost. Where that premium is out of reach, the loan is lending against a lease-up that the market does not show. Why 6.75 %

At the low end of the cost range two metros clear the exit yield and none clears a 6.75 % hurdle.

Build at the low end of the RLB range and Miami yields 6.05 % and New York 5.69 %, both above a 5.25 % exit yield. Boston reaches 4.63 %, Washington, D.C. 4.77 % and Chicago 4.33 %. No metro reaches 6.75 %, the exit yield plus a 1.5-point margin; Miami would need a rent 11.6 % over the typical rent to get there.

Set the exit yield, the margin, the cost point, the rent premium and SOFR below. The count of metros that pencil changes with every move, and each bar shows the yield on cost against the line. Why 6.75 %

For a developer the point is the order of the work. Price the rent first: what a new building in that submarket leases for against the typical rent. Then the hard cost, from a bid, not a range. Land and the loan come last because they move the answer least. Titleman Underwriting reads the site, the nearby sales and the cost, and returns this stack for one address. How we built the unit

What this does not replace

This is a screen across 18 metros, not a study of one site. It does not replace a contractor’s bid, a land appraisal, a rent survey of the submarket rent, a lender’s term sheet or an engineer’s review of the site. RLB publishes a range for each city, and a real building lands anywhere in it.

Titleman Underwriting checks a development deal at one address: the land, the nearby sales, the rent a new building gets in that submarket, the cost and the exit, with every figure tied to its record. If you build 300 units a year or 3,000, write to us and we will run one of your sites.