Hundreds of apartments are popping up around Ogden. In 2025, the city approved building permits for more than 450 new units, according to the Ivory-Boyer Construction Database.
The new construction has some wondering how full — and affordable — Ogden’s apartments are.
Apartment vacancy rates are hard to come by, but Paul Smith, executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Utah, said the most relevant local numbers are from CBRE. Their most recent report shows the occupancy rate in Weber County growing faster than in other parts of the Wasatch Front down to southern Salt Lake County.
Weber also has the second-lowest vacancy rate, at 4.8%, and the second-highest net absorption, which measures how quickly new units fill up.
“That tells you that even though new places are coming on the market, they are renting fast,” Smith said.
CBRE does not track Ogden-specific data, but real estate research firm CoStar does. In the third quarter of 2025, Ogden had the second-lowest vacancy rate of the five Utah cities CoStar studies, at 10.5%. Numbers from both research groups, whether county or city-level, show that Ogden apartments are not lacking for potential residents.
In all, Ogden has about 12,000 apartment units, based on the U.S. Census’ 2023 American Community Survey data on multi-unit housing units. That figure does not count recent construction.
A good portion of the city’s apartments are designed to be affordable under the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. There are 2,503 of these units up and running, and another 1,275 coming down the pike, according to the Utah Housing Corporation.
This does not include other types of subsidized housing, like properties managed by local housing authorities or market-rate units where qualifying individuals pay with vouchers.
Affordable units are available to renters who earn up to 60% of the area median income, which is $123,100 for the Ogden-Clearfield Metropolitan Statistical Area in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sixty percent of the median comes out to $73,860, just under the median income in Ogden proper.
Lotus Company, a Salt Lake City-based developer, operates 500 affordable units in Ogden, with another 300 or so in the works. Beyond the available developer tax credits and the fact that the city’s housing and zoning requirements are clear, Steven Blomquist, Lotus’ director of development, said building affordable units is more fulfilling.
“For us, what affordable housing really means is targeting the 60% AMI [area median income], so our school teachers, our first responders, our service workers, our people in our community that really provide the lifeblood for community,” he said.
As for why Lotus is investing so much in Ogden, Blomquist said people want to live there. Their affordable units in Ogden have a vacancy rate of around 7%, compared to 10% to 15% in their market-rate properties.
“There's a lot of great workforce employees who live up there, so you can kind of really capitalize on building the projects and communities for them,” he said.
Affordable units are designed to cost around 30% of an eligible resident’s income.
A HUD formula sets maximum rent prices for affordable units. A one-bedroom apartment in the Ogden area costs $1,356, which means a single person making the maximum eligible income would pay 32% of their monthly gross income in rent. A couple renting the same unit would pay at least 28% of their income. The income limit depends on the number of people in the household, but the rent remains the same.
Market-rate rentals are also under construction, from townhomes at the mouth of Ogden Canyon to the city’s downtown WonderBlock development.
Regardless of price, more supply is beneficial, said Smith with the Rental Housing Association. Utah has a housing shortage, and even new pricier units can free up space in affordable ones, which played out this year in Denver, according to Bloomberg.
“The only way out is to build,” he said, “and to build enough that people have more options.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
