Growth of NHL Hockey Nationwide Boosts Apartment Markets

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Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Marketwatch on Oct. 12.

As the 2016 National Hockey League season gets set to drop the puck Wednesday night, one thing that isn’t dropping are rental prices nearest hockey-only stadium venues.

That’s the analysis from RENTCafe and MarketWatch, which looked at more than a dozen NHL-primary arenas in the U.S., and showed that some of the newest arenas, those less than 20 years old, have been the biggest drivers of higher rental prices.

RENTCafe attributes the higher rents to the growth of retail and entertainment districts around the arenas as they have solid attendance and dozens of games during the season. For example the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C., which is home to the NHL franchise Washington Capitals (And the NBA’s Washington Wizards and WNBA’s Mystics) has proved a catalyst for growth in what once was a moribund and unsafe part of the city especially after dark.

The Downtown DC Business Improvement District, a public-private partnership that was formed to boost the D.C. downtown area, estimated that between 1997, when the Verizon Center opened, and 2013, more than $8 billion in residential and commercial development was built.

The RENTCafe analysis showed that rentals with more than 50 units within two miles of Nationwide Arena, in Columbus, Ohio, which opened in 2000 and where the Columbus Blue Jackets play, are at a 69% premium ($1,354 a month) compared with similar 50-plus unit rentals in the Ohio city that average $803 a month.

Apartment rents nearest the home of the Nashville Predators, which began playing at the then Nashville Arena (now the Bridgestone Arena) in 1998, run at a 66% premium, $1,911 a month, compared with a citywide average of $1,149.

In absolute terms, apartment rents nearest the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., home of the San Jose Sharks, which began playing in 1991, average a whopping $3,000 a month, 18% higher than citywide rents of about $2,500.

The analysis looks at NHL-only stadiums, and excludes those which share a venue with an NBA team (such as Madison Square Garden which is home to both the New York Rangers and the New York Knicks, as well as the WNBA team the New York Liberty), so as to eliminate the argument that NBA and WNBA attendance (7,300 fans on average, down from a peak of close to 11,000 in 1998, the second year the league played), not NHL attendance drove in the rental increase.

Both the NHL and the NBA play 82 home and away games a season, and average attendance is about the same, 17,481 a game for NHL games for the 2015-2016 season and 17,319 for the NBA season last year.

The NHL has been on a steady expansion since the early 1990s, growing southward and westward in the U.S. (there are seven Canadian NHL teams) from 21 teams in 1990, to 31 teams starting next year, when a yet-unnamed franchise in Las Vegas will begin playing at the T-Mobile Arena which opened in April on the Strip for the 2017-2018 season.

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