A projected rate at which all real estate properties in a particular area can be sold or leased in a given amount of time. For example, if 100 apartments are sold every month and there are 2000 apartments for sale, the absorption rate is 20 months, that is, it will take 20 months to sell all of the apartments currently available for sale. And if there are 4000 homes for sale, the absorption rate will be 40 months for all of the homes to sell. Of course, this doesn’t account for the number of housing units which will eventually come on the market in addition to the units already offered for sale.