Located at the convergence of eight interstate systems, Indianapolis is known as the Crossroads to America. Its logistical advantage puts it within a day’s drive of 75 percent of U.S. and Canadian population centers. Indianapolis is home to the seventh largest cargo airport in the U.S., which is also the second-largest FedEx hub in the world. Add to that an appealing tax structure and business-friendly regulatory environment, and all the ingredients are present to make this the Midwest’s “go-to’ regional distribution market.

California’s Orange County experienced a 1.5 percent increase in sales.

Investment home sales in Philadelphia rose by 1.6 percent between 2016 and 2017.

Cincinnati is an up-and-coming Midwestern industrial market due to a thriving economy and diverse industrial base of advanced manufacturing, automotive and e-commerce, which got a boost in 2017 by landing Amazon’s only U.S Prime Air Hub. The region has experienced rent gains of 8.2 percent annually for the last five years, which generated 3.6 million sq. ft. of new product deliveries last year, with another 4.5 million sq. ft. under construction at the end of 2017. Even so, vacancy averaged just 4.2 percent at year-end, with absorption of 5.1 million sq. ft. outpacing new supply. 

Sales of investment homes in New York went up by 2.5 percent.

The areas that attract garden-style apartment developers may be older cities, like Columbus, which is the third on the list of metropolitan areas with the highest number of units under construction relative to the size of the local population, according to CoStar. Columbus still has relatively inexpensive sites on which to build.

"These are chiefly markets with plenty of land," says CoStar’s Rybczynski.

Windy City is obviously becoming more attractive to SFR investors—it experienced a 30.4 percent increase in investment home sales between 2016 and 2017.