Policy Changes, Shifting Demand And Design Trends: How San Diego's Housing Market Is Faring In 2026

San Diego’s multifamily and affordable housing markets are heading into a “transition” phase, according to Chase Rongé, principal and director at MVE + Partners, a California architecture firm. 

But what does that look like across the city? 

Multifamily vacancy reached its highest rate since 2010 during the first quarter of 2026, at 4.8%. While largely due to the amount of new products coming online, the construction pipeline shrank nearly 25% year-over-year to approximately 11,000 units. It’s estimated that the city is facing a housing shortfall of about 90,000 units. 

“We’ve seen sustained momentum over the past decade, which has really made our housing market grow and diversify,” Rongé said. “Activity seems to have cooled over the past year or so, but things are heading in the right direction. The city is evolving so quickly.”

Rongé will speak about these and other trends at Bisnow’s San Diego Multifamily & Affordable Housing Conference on Aug. 5. Click here to register. 

Bisnow spoke with Rongé to learn more about the state of San Diego’s housing sector, his firm’s approach to designing affordable communities, and what he’s hoping attendees will take away from this event.

Bisnow: How would you describe the current state of San Diego’s multifamily and affordable housing sectors?

Rongé: We're in a transition phase. San Diego has been at the forefront of California’s policy changes, and we’ve experienced a lot of positive energy from that over the last decade. This, combined with a favorable economy over the past 10 years, helped drive a housing boom in the city. In the last 18 to 24 months, there’s been a slight correction in that. 

We're going to see San Diego's housing market evolve. The primary area of the last big housing boom was downtown and the urban center, but now that’s moving to other neighborhoods across San Diego County such as Kearny Mesa or Chula Vista. We have many new developers who have moved into the area, and we're seeing more diversity of product types. 

One of the most interesting things, to me, is that we're seeing a large comeback of the for-sale product, which I think we need to balance out the multifamily market in San Diego. This will really help to create a healthy environment for us to continue to grow.

Bisnow: Can you tell us about your position at MVE, as well as some of your firm’s projects?

Rongé: My role is to lead the San Diego practice, oversee many of our projects and continue to develop our business in San Diego — but also to partner with our other principals and strategically look at how we're growing in the western U.S. We have clients in San Diego that are doing projects outside of the city, and vice versa. We work as one business unit, which allows us to be nimble and successfully support all of our markets.

We designed a significant master plan in Mission Valley called Riverwalk San Diego that is now under development. The 200-acre, $2.5B master-planned project includes both residential, retail and commercial components. We are also under construction on The Becker, a 190-unit affordable housing development by Wakeland Housing and Development. This is the affordable component of the broader Riverwalk project. 

Another is the PaLi Uptown. It’s a 21-story, high-rise market-rate project with 206 apartment units in the Hillcrest neighborhood. There's a pedestrian thoroughfare that the San Diego Association of Governments is putting in right in front of the project, so we've been collaborating with them on how our project is going to influence that.

Bisnow: You're speaking on the Multifamily and Mixed-Use Development panel. What does a good design strategy look like for multifamily and mixed-use projects?

Rongé: Often, good design and the business case for a project get pinned against each other, when good design can really create an advantage for the business case for clients. We try to approach our projects that way, which is why we've been successful with a lot of our projects.

You hear the word “efficiency” thrown around all the time, and yes, we do focus on efficiency, but efficiency with making great places for people to live. There's a symbiosis there that we really try to achieve. 

Residents are changing and evolving. San Diego has recently seen a shift towards more varied unit sizing and enhanced amenity programs. Some projects are blending public and private amenities to better engage the environment around them and create community. 

Programmatically, we’re trying to be dynamic and change with the needs of the residents, especially as we're moving out of downtown and into neighborhoods that haven't experienced large-scale multifamily before.

Bisnow: What do you think will be the hottest topics of conversation at this event, and what do you hope the biggest takeaways are?

Rongé: Changes in interpretation of development policy in San Diego and how to navigate that are going to be big topics of discussion at this event. It’s something that we all need to intimately understand, and I think we need to collaborate as an industry on how we approach it.

We're also a few years into Complete Communities, the city’s housing initiative enacted in 2020. How are we doing? How's that working? Are we seeing that continue to be a successful incentive? Are we seeing backlash?

I hope attendees find continuity on how we can continue to grow our local communities. If we can find some common paths between all of us, we can build momentum in designing and building San Diego. 

This article was produced in collaboration between MVE and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.