Quick answers:
- Des Moines metro apartment vacancy climbed from 5.3% to 7.3% in 2025, driven mostly by a wave of new supply now competing hard for renters with move-in concessions.
- Iowa property managers are working with less cushion than most: security deposits are capped by state law, and the state’s own rental assistance safety net closed to new applicants in 2022.
- Meanwhile, standard screening is quietly intensifying the vacancy problem: nearly a quarter of applicants who look unqualified on paper could actually afford the unit once their real income is counted.
- Some Iowa property management companies are already closing that gap without loosening their screening standards.
New Construction Leads to Increased Occupancy Pressure
Des Moines metro apartment vacancy climbed from 5.3% to 7.3% by the end of 2025, one of the sharpest single-year increases the market has seen, according to a new CBRE research.
That jump is mostly a supply story: more than 6,000 new multifamily units have been added or are in the pipeline for the metro, and new developments are already offering one- or two-month lease concessions to compete for renters.
Nationally, 16.6% of stabilized apartments were offering some kind of concession in January 2026, the highest rate in over a decade — and in the most oversupplied markets that number climbs well over 50%.
CBRE expects the market to absorb that supply and settle back toward a normal 5% vacancy by 2027 or 2028.
That’s useful context, and it also raises the stakes. In a market where new buildings are actively courting renters with concessions, every qualified applicant an older or smaller property turns away is one more renter free to lease somewhere else instead.
Operators here are competing harder to fill units than they have in years, which makes losing a qualified applicant to a screening blind spot even more costly.
Other Iowa-Specific Factors Compounding the Occupancy Problem
That competitive pressure is landing on property managers who already have less room to absorb risk than operators in most other states.
- Security deposits are capped by state law. Iowa law caps security deposits at two months’ rent, a fixed ceiling no matter how much actual risk a given lease carries.
- The state’s own safety net is gone. The COVID-era rental assistance program, which distributed $170 million to 17,000 households, stopped taking new applications in August 2022, leaving no comparable safety net since, especially in smaller and rural counties.
Higher vacancy, new competition from concession-offering developments, a hard cap on deposits, and no state backstop left to fall back on.
Industry-Wide Factors Compounding the Occupancy Problem
The squeeze on Iowa property managers isn’t limited to these localized factors. It’s showing up across the board.
- National vacancy keeps climbing as new supply comes online. National rental vacancy is now above 7%, the highest level since 2017.
- Multifamily properties are struggling to pay off their loans. CMBS-backed multifamily loan delinquency has nearly quadrupled since early 2024 — from 1.84% to 7.15% as of March 2026 — driven initially by loans taken out cheaply in the 2021–2022 building boom hitting maturity at today’s much higher rates, and more recently by borrowers defaulting mid-loan as occupancy pressure and rising costs squeeze property-level income. (Multifamily Dive)
- Most operators don’t feel equipped to manage the risk of renter defaults. Only 20% of property operators say they’re “very satisfied” with today’s tools for managing the risk of defaults, according to a recent survey.
Why Standard Screening Intensifies the Occupancy Problem
Screening captures a moment, not a person. A credit report, an income statement, and a rental history check all describe where someone stood on the day they applied. None of them account for income that never shows up on a single pay stub, or what happens after the application is filed.
A renter picking up gig shifts to cover a rent bump, or driving for DoorDash on the side, doesn’t show up as qualifying income on a standard application, even when the money is real and coming in consistently.
The numbers back this up. Most screening only counts steady paycheck income. Looked at that way, only 53% of applicants meet the standard rent-to-income requirement. But most people earn more than just their paycheck: gig work, tips, side jobs, bonuses. Count that income too, and 76.9% of applicants qualify, per Payscore’s 2026 income verification analysis. That’s nearly a quarter of applicants who look unqualified on paper but can actually afford the unit.
Standard Screening Misses Qualified Renters
Share of applicants who meet the standard rent-to-income requirement.
Recurring Income Only
pay stubs and W-2 wages
53%
All Income Counted
plus gig work, tips, side jobs and bonuses
76.9%
Nearly a quarter of applicants look unqualified on paper, but can afford the unit
Source: Payscore, 2026 income verification analysis
The result: Renters who are fully capable of paying rent get filtered out, not because they’re worse tenants, but because the system only takes one snapshot and treats it as the whole picture. Every one of those denials is a unit that could have been filled, sitting empty in a market where vacancy is already climbing.
Traditional Cosigner or Guarantor Options Have Real Trade-offs
When a strong applicant doesn’t clear standard criteria, property teams have historically had two paths. Both come with costs.
Deny the application
- Pro: Simple, low-effort, no additional screening required.
- Con: Loses a potentially good renter, extends vacancy, and adds to marketing spend to attract a replacement applicant.
Ask for a personal cosigner or guarantor
- Pro: Gives the applicant a path forward without an outright denial.
- Con: Requires manual screening and verification of the guarantor on top of the applicant’s own file. That’s added paperwork, added time, and often days of delay for a unit that’s already ready to lease. It also assumes the applicant has someone available and willing to cosign, which isn’t true for everyone.
Neither option solves the underlying issue: the screening snapshot itself hasn’t gotten any more accurate.
How Some Iowa Operators Are Adapting
Conlin Properties, a Des Moines-based property management company with more than 50 years in the Iowa market and over 6,500 units under management across Central Iowa, ran into this exact bottleneck.
Their team’s standard fallback for a denied or conditional applicant was a personal cosigner or guarantor, but verifying one manually added days to the leasing process, even when a unit was ready to fill. It also left some capable applicants with no path forward at all if they didn’t have someone available to cosign.
Everything changed, however, when they decided to stop denying flagged applicants outright and, instead, offer them a supported second look through OneApp Partnership.
Conlin’s Director of Property Operations, April White, explained the shift this way:
“OneApp has allowed us to approve applications sooner rather than later because if we have a unit ready, and a prospect follows through and applies via OneApp, then they can potentially be moving in by the end of the week.”
The change didn’t require Conlin to loosen its screening standards, or add on an additional expense. It gave applicants a consistent, no-cost lease support option instead of a case-by-case guarantor review.
In its first year with OneApp Partnership, Conlin saw:
- 64+ successful leases
- 15 properties onboarded
- A 3.62% increase in occupancy
- $788,458 in all-time revenue added
April also pointed to a benefit that doesn’t show up in the numbers: staff morale. Before, a denial often meant hours of team time spent on tours, calls, and paperwork, ending with nothing to show for it. Now, a denial isn’t the end of the conversation.
[Read the full Conlin Properties case study →]
Where This Leaves Iowa Property Managers
Vacancy is climbing, deposits are capped, and the state safety net is gone. Those three things aren’t within any one property manager’s control. But the fourth piece, how applicants get screened, is.
The property teams seeing the best results in this market aren’t the ones lowering their standards. They’re the ones finding a consistent way to give a qualified-but-flagged applicant another path forward, without adding manual work to already lean operations.
If your team is running into this same wall, whether that’s guarantor paperwork slowing down move-ins, or applicants with no cosigner and no path forward, it’s worth a conversation about what a lease support option could look like for your portfolio.