No problem — here's the briefing rendered directly:

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HOUSING SIGNAL April 04, 2026

TL;DR - Asking rents are down 1.7% year-over-year and have fallen 5.5% from their 2022 peak, with the vacancy rate hitting a record high of 7.3%. - The rental softness is structural: the pandemic household-formation surge pulled demand forward, and the resulting construction boom delivered 1.6 million completions in 2025 — supply that is still clearing the market. - Immigration policy is now an emerging headwind: McBride flags that deportations and reduced legal immigration will likely suppress rental demand further, making 2026 another soft year for landlords.

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The US rental market is grinding through year 4 of a correction that most forecasters expected to ease by now — and immigration policy may have just extended the timeline.

RENTS: STILL FALLING, VACANCY AT A RECORD

Bill McBride's monthly rent review — drawing on Apartment List and Realtor.com data — paints a consistent picture of continued softness. The national median rent sits at $1,363, up 0.4% month-over-month as seasonal demand returns, but still down 1.7% year-over-year. That YoY figure is the weakest in Apartment List's data going back to 2017, eclipsing even the early pandemic trough. Realtor.com's read corroborates: 30 consecutive months of year-over-year declines, with median asking rents at a 4-year low.

The vacancy story is equally striking. The national multifamily vacancy rate held at 7.3% — a record high in the index. That number reflects a market where new supply continues to arrive faster than demand can absorb it.

THE SUPPLY OVERHANG: A TIMELINE STORY

To understand why, the sequencing matters. The 2020–2021 pandemic drove a surge in household formation — primarily roommates splitting into separate units — which spiked rental demand and triggered a wave of multifamily construction starts. Supply chain delays pushed those units to market in the 2023–2025 window, with 1.6 million total housing completions recorded in 2025 (including manufactured homes). That's the hangover: demand was borrowed from the future; the supply arrived on schedule.

McBride notes the pipeline is thinning — fewer rental units are slated to come online in 2026, which under normal conditions would let vacancy rates drift down and allow rents to stabilize or tick up modestly. That was the base case heading into this year.

THE NEW VARIABLE: IMMIGRATION POLICY

The base case has been revised. McBride explicitly flags immigration as the new downward pressure on rents: increased deportations combined with reduced legal immigration flows are shrinking the renter pool. This is a demand-side shock layered on top of a market already digesting excess supply. The implication is direct — 2026 now looks like another year of soft rents even as the construction surge fades, because the demand recovery that would normally follow supply normalization is being partially offset by a smaller renter population.

SYNTHESIS

The rental market's extended correction is no longer just a supply story — it's a supply-and-demographics story. Builders responded rationally to a real signal in 2021; the distortion was on the demand side (pandemic household formation was a one-time pull-forward, not a trend). What's new in 2026 is that immigration policy has become a housing market variable in a way it rarely has been, and the directional effect runs clearly toward continued weakness. For renters, this remains a favorable negotiating environment. For multifamily operators and new-build landlords, margin pressure is unlikely to lift materially until vacancy clears — and that clock just got reset.

(Note: This edition draws on a single analyst brief. A fuller multi-source synthesis will run when the complete feed is available.)

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