Greater Boston may be on track to deliver over 5,000 new apartments in 2019, but it represents a 24 percent drop from last year, while the metro area’s population continues to grow.

A new report from rental housing search site RentCafe reported Boston developers are on track to deliver 5,336 apartment units this year, the 12th-largest such tally in the nation, while the city’s population grew 0.6 percent between 2017 and 2018.

As Banker & Tradesman reported earlier this month, a stutter in the steady pace of multifamily deliveries has given some of the city’s largest landlords the ability to raise rents, particularly in Boston and Cambridge. Greater Boston’s effective monthly rent is $2,278, multifamily researchers REIS Inc. recently reported. Boston-area rents rose 1.7 percent in the second quarter, tied for the 11th-highest percent increase out of 79 metros tracked by the firm’s study.