The country's 35 million apartment residents spent $421.5B on goods and services in 2011 (mostly on Chinese takeout and carpet cleaning, which aren't unrelated), according to a recent study by the National Multi Housing Council and the National Apartment Association. NMHC's Jim Lapides says 70% of that stayed within the local economy, creating a total economic impact of $885.2B supporting 22.8 million jobs.

Jim tells us the most surprising find was that apartment operations and maintenance has four times the impact on local communities compared to construction. ($15B from construction and $183B from operations and improvements in 2011.) And the multifamily industry has an overall $1.1T economic impact annually. That's more than $3B every day, and the industry supports 25 million jobs. As you'd expect, NYC and Los Angeles saw the largest economic impact from apartments. But Seattle was a shocker: It created more construction jobs than Chicago, Boston, and Houston--places with significantly larger populations.