A new forecast of the nation’s multifamily markets’ performance says Boston will see one of the biggest declines in vacancy rates among the nation’s major metro areas in 2022.

Freddie Mac’s annual Multifamily Outlook report predicts that despite a nation-wide acceleration of migration towards lower-cost markets, the Northeast will see the biggest decline in multifamily vacancy rates, with the nation’s biggest cities and Rust Belt metros generally seeing vacancies shrink. The report singles out Washington, D.C. (predicted 160-basis-point drop) and Boston (predicted 130-basis-point drop) as two of the highest in the region.

The government-backed investor in mortgage securities said it expects positive rent growth everywhere in the country, with the highest projected growth forecast for Phoenix (8.2 percent), Tampa, Florida (7.7 percent), Las Vegas (7.4 percent) and Tuscon, Arizona (7.1 percent). The weakest rent growth is predicted in New York City and Milwaukee (2-2.5 percent).

The Freddie Mac report also found that Boston rents still have not quite caught up to where they were in 2019. In addition, renter incomes fell “meaningfully” in Boston and four other metros around the country, including San Francisco, as renters either bought homes or moved to lower-cost locales.

In its own December 2021 report, Yardi Matrix reported that the Boston area saw the number of jobs grow an average of 7.3 percent over the last six months of the year, while the total housing stock only grew by 2.2 percent over the same period, one of the largest such spreads of any coastal metro after New York City. Overall rent was up 11.9 percent year-over-year in December according to the report.

Boston saw significant declines in rent and occupancy during 2020 as students at region’s 50-plus colleges and universities moved back in with their parents and other renters began shopping for discounts and concessions, driving prices lower. Those declines are now causing market statistics reports to note the metro area saw huge jumps in rent between December 2020 and December 2021 – apartment listings site Zumper said last week that rent for a one-bedroom apartment was up between 12 percent and 23 percent in many Boston-area communities over that period.

“It’s [based on] an artificially low number during the [worst of the] pandemic, ” Zumper data analyst Jeff Andrews said in an interview with Banker & Tradesman. “In Boston, between March 2020 and January 2021, rent dropped 19.2 percent. When you compare March 2020 to December 2021, rent is up 3.2 percent.”