Hell's Kitchen may not sound like a particularly attractive landing spot for the young folk, but it's actually an urban hotspot. The Clinton-Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan is lucky number 13 on a new list from RENTCafé that ranks America's 50 largest cities by construction of new apartments. The apartment search site is part of Yardi Matrix and used its data to parse out where the most apartments are being built. They determined that the 20 most-active neighborhoods for that kind of construction are mostly "hyper-urban," centrally located areas attractive to millennial and Gen Z renters. (Generally speaking, this includes people born from 1980 on. Millennials, in fact, now outnumber boomers.) (Image source: Getty Images.) Los Angeles and Atlanta have the neighborhoods with the most new units RENTCafé says that there have been about 1.6 million new rentals built in the past five years nationwide. By state, the leaders are California, Texas, and New York, and by locality, by far the leader is downtown Los Angeles at 10,136 units complete, 39% of the total number built in the sprawling City of Angels in the past five years. Here's a tabular look at the list RENTCafé built using Yardi Matrix data: Rank Neighborhood City Units Completed 2017-2021 % of City Total 1. Downtown Los Angeles Los Angeles 10,136 39% 2. Midtown Atlanta Atlanta 5,936 21% 3. Hunters Point Queens, New York City 5,423 53% 4. Navy Yard Washington, D.C. 4,953 22% 5. Downtown Fort Worth Fort Worth, Texas 4,630 28% 6. Northwest San Antonio San Antonio 3,962 16% 7. Spring Valley Las Vegas 3,919 43% 8. South Loop Chicago 3,516 14% 9. Downtown San Jose San Jose, California 3,511 58% 10. Hollywood Los Angeles 3,431 13% 11. Downtown Brooklyn Brooklyn, New York City 3,359 19% 12. Downtown Miami Miami 3,280 16% 13. Clinton-Hell's Kitchen Manhattan, New York City 3,189 19% 14. Midtown-Edgewater Miami 3,045 15% 15. South Lake Union Miami 2,979 12% 16. Encanto Village Phoenix 2,965 21% 17. Uptown Charlotte Charlotte, North Carolina 2,918 11% 18. Waterfront Washington Washington, D.C. 2,901 13% 19. Washington Avenue-Memorial Park Houston 2,897 8% 20. East Village San Diego 2,699 22% The Great Migration goes both ways, yielding zones of growing opportunity The idea of a "Great Migration" has taken hold during the pandemic, and it's certainly understandable that significant real estate investor attention and dollars have been directed to the suburbs and beyond. But there's a similar movement back in to the central cities, one that recent Fed analysis found is roughly balancing out the urban exodus. Many of those moving into the central cities are, as mentioned above, millennials and Gen Zers attracted to the urban lifestyle, and the apartment industry is responding with new construction. Stock market plays here include major real estate investment trusts (REITs) such as AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential. There are others, too, such as the three covered in this piece by Motley Fool contributor Liz Brumer-Smith: "3 Apartment REITs to Buy Now." Each REIT has its own mix of markets, and those wishing to specifically target the hottest neighborhoods might consider crowdfunding, too, and the tax-deferral opportunities presented by the Opportunity Zone program. Many of those zones encompass just the kinds of neighborhoods that are proving so attractive for new apartment construction and to the people looking to occupy trendy new digs. Marc Rapport has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends AvalonBay Communities. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source