Rents for metro Denver apartments reached an all-time high, while the vacancy rate stood at historic lows, according to the Q2 Metro Denver Vacancy & Rent Report.

Report authors called the Q2 results “extraordinary.”

“There was a spike in rent along with a decrease in vacancy,” according to the report. “This is becoming a common result for other areas of the country as we emerged from COVID-19 restrictions. Although common to have seasonal rent increases for the second quarter, the current results are extraordinary.”

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The report, which gathers data from almost 130,000 apartments across six metro Denver counties, showed the average apartment rent stood at $1,651, a 6.5% hike from Q1 and 9% increase year-over-year. That $108 increase in average rent is “the largest quarterly dollar change ever recorded by this survey.” The prior quarterly increase high was $64 between Q1 and Q2 of 2018. In less than 10 years, average metro Denver rents have more than doubled, as $800 was the average in Q2 2002.

Vacancy rates, meanwhile, plunged to historic lows at 3.7% average, down from the 5.5% level in Q1 and 5.1% year-over-year. Report authors consider anything below 4% to be “frictional vacancy,” which is normal turnover.

“This quarter’s changes in rent and vacancy rates are some of the largest recorded over the history of this quarterly report,” noted the authors.

The report has been produced since 1981 by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. Its authors are Ron Throupe, University of Denver Daniels College of Business Burns School of Real Estate & Construction Management, and Jennifer Von Stroh of Colorado Economic and Management Associates.

“Many commodities and services have had dramatic percentage changes recently, such as lumber, car rentals, hotels, gas. But unlike these other commodities and services, rents tend to be ‘sticky’ and do not severely correct later, but typically display a slowdown in growth until incomes catch up at some future time,” according to the report.

Even the thousands of new units added from multifamily construction, which normally drives down rents, did nothing because of the influx of new residents.

“The Denver Metro apartment market added 2,495 new units to inventory,” according to the report. “But could not keep up with an influx of renters who absorbed (rented) a whopping 10,298 for the quarter. The overall net absorption of units for the year 2020 was 8,195. Total net absorption for 2021 is now approaching the boom year of 2018 which saw 13,708 units absorbed.”

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Here are some miscellaneous factoids from the report:

• Average rents in Boulder/Broomfield counties remained the highest at $1,952, with Douglas County not far behind at $1,797.

• The vacancy rate in Douglas County was the lowest of all the counties surveyed at 2.2%.

• The “hottest sub-markets” included Denver-City Park with almost no vacancy at .7%, Longmont at 1% and Aurora-North at 1.7%.