Cache County has struck a rare balance in Utah’s rental market, with enough new apartments to give renters choices but not so many that landlords are scrambling to fill them, according to a new report commissioned by the Rental Housing Association of Utah and written by economist James Wood.
While Salt Lake, Utah and Davis counties have seen rising vacancies and rent concessions after years of heavy apartment construction, Cache County has added rental units at a more measured pace, keeping the market healthy for both renters and property owners.
Cache County issued permits for 2,779 apartment units from 2014 through July 2026, growing its rental inventory by 21.5 percent. That is the smallest increase among Utah’s major counties. Over the same period, inventory grew 41.4 percent in Salt Lake County, 38.8 percent in Utah County and 35 percent in Davis County.
Those larger increases have created stressful conditions for property owners along the Wasatch Front. The report notes that even some tax credit properties in Salt Lake City, normally the most reliably full, have cut rents and offered concessions for the first time in the program’s 40-year history.
Cache County has avoided that pattern. Today, the county has about 18,000 rental units, nearly 17,000 of them occupied, representing 4.8 percent of all renter-occupied units in Utah. Demand has been fueled by steady local growth between 2020 and 2025:
• Employment rose 10.5 percent, adding 6,484 jobs.
• Population grew 9.1 percent, adding 12,122 residents.
• Utah State University enrollment increased 3.9 percent, to 28,900 students.
Logan dominates new development, accounting for 2,454 of the 2,779 permitted units since 2014, or 88 percent. North Logan added 291 units, though it has issued no new apartment permits since 2021. Smaller cities also hold a meaningful share of renters, including Smithfield (820 renter-occupied units), Hyrum (541) and Providence (409).
Permitting has followed a sawtooth pattern, from a low of 24 units in 2016 to a record 536 in 2020, then down to 72 in 2021. Activity has picked up again: 329 units were permitted through July 2026, putting this year on track to be the second-highest on record, all of it in Logan.
The market’s current vacancy rate is 5.5 percent, a level that gives new renters options and moderates rent growth while allowing apartment communities to operate successfully. Rents rose 3.5 percent over the past year. Average monthly rents are $1,100 for a one-bedroom, $1,325 for a two-bedroom and $1,762 for a three-bedroom unit.
The report projects that Cache County will need roughly 400 additional rental units each year to keep pace with renter household growth. Projections from Western States Multifamily show demand rising by 413 to 431 households per year, for a total of 1,272 new renter households between 2026 and 2029.
On the supply side, 534 units are under construction and another 1,526 are planned. Given higher interest rates, Wood expects no more than half of the planned units to be built by 2029, bringing projected new supply to about 1,297 units, nearly identical to projected demand. As a result, the report expects 2029 conditions to look much like today, with vacancy around 5 percent and annual rent increases of 3 percent to 4 percent.
“Cache County has grown its rental supply at a pace that matches local job, population and enrollment growth. That balance has spared the county the vacancy spikes and concessions we are seeing in Salt Lake, Utah and Davis counties, and the pipeline of planned projects suggests that balance should hold through the end of the decade,” said Paul Smith, executive director of RHA.
