New student apartment building in downtown Madison has not yet opened. It's already almost full

MADISON, Wis. -- Chapter Madison Apartments is a ten-story building with more than 500 beds -- 99.5% of them are already filled before move-in can even start.

Downtown Madison is in a housing shortage- with roughly a 3% vacancy rate. The healthy national average is 5%.

Matt Wachter, the city of Madison director of the department of Planning, Community & Economic Development the city isn't able to keep up with an increased demand.

"Since the Great Recession, the city of Madison has basically been growing faster than we've been able to deliver new housing units," he said. "You [then] see that show up is on the rental side. You see our vacancy rates are very low."

According to Wachter that means it can be more difficult to find a rental.

"It also gives more power to landlords to raise rents because there's a lot of people, again, competing for that sort of shortage of housing," Wachter said.

it isn't only students driving up demand downtown- Wachter said it's also young professionals coming into the city.

"You're bringing in people who are very likely to be trying to rent an apartment," he said.

Wachter also noted that if more student housing, like the Chapter Madison, goes up- it could mean other properties start looking towards the general public to be filled.

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