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RAPIDLY RISING RENTS Rents continue to rise at the fastest pace in decades, making housing costlier than ever for many Americans. Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/rising-rent-prices/ Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
[Rents are rising everywhere. See how much prices are up in your area.]
Rents are rising everywhere. See
how much prices are up in your area.
How rent has changed in 1,500 counties across
the United States since the start of the pandemic
By Abha Bhattarai, Chris Alcantara and Andrew Van Dam
April 21, 2022
Look up a U.S. county
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Change in rent from Q1 2020 to Q1 2022
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Note: Price estimates are for multi-family rentals in counties with at least 1,000 units
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Rents continue to rise at the fastest pace in decades, making housing costlier than ever for many Americans.
Nationally, rents rose a record 11.3 percent last year, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group. That fast pace of growth remained elevated in the first months of 2022, as many parts of the country continued to notch double-digit jumps in rent prices.
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“A supply-demand mismatch is making rents unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The lowest-income families are being hardest hit by rising rents and a lack of supply.”
The number of people — particularly younger Americans — looking for their own apartments is squeezing an already tight housing market. At the same time, pandemic-related material shortages and construction delays are slowing down the production of new homes and rentals. Experts like Shea say the shortfall of affordable rentals is likely to get even worse in the coming months, as mortgage rates, already reaching highs not seen since 2011 thanks to rising interest rates, drive would-be homeowners to rent instead.
Although few places in the United States have escaped recent hikes, rental spikes have been particularly pronounced along the Sun Belt and in Florida. The state is home to the three metro areas where monthly rent jumped the most: Naples, Sarasota and Tampa. Monthly rents in those cities are up between 29 percent and 39 percent in the past two years, according to CoStar.
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“The ability to work from home persuaded a lot of households to relocate to warmer, less expensive locations,” said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar. “People started saying, ‘Why am I staying in the Northeast where it’s freezing cold, when I could move to Tampa or Fort Lauderdale, have my own apartment, and be outside all the time?’ We saw huge spikes in demand in those markets.”
There has also been a migration from pricey city centers — such as San Francisco, New York and D.C. — to more affordable suburbs, particularly as many white-collar workers in high-paying industries such as tech and finance transition to more flexible remote-work arrangements.
And although early in the pandemic, many cities, states and management companies placed limits on rent increases and in some cases, froze prices altogether, most of those measures have expired. In some cases, renters say landlords are factoring in two years’ worth of increases when leases renew.
Overall, CoStar is forecasting another 6 percent rise in U.S. rents this year, about double pre-pandemic norms.
The burden of rising rents falls heaviest on younger households, as well as on Black and Hispanic families, further exacerbating long-simmering inequalities.
Nationwide, about two-thirds of American families owned their homes as of the end of 2021, according to the Census Bureau, but the same release shows a majority of Black and Hispanic families rent their homes or apartments, while just over a quarter of their White peers do the same.
Separately, 62 percent of families with heads of household under age 35 rent, compared with 30 percent of households with a head between ages 45 and 54.
Low-wage workers are also disproportionately being impacted. There is not a single state, metro area or county in the United States where a typical minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom rental, according to a recent study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
In Tampa, Max Corey’s rent recently skyrocketed by 30 percent to more than $1,000 a month. The musician and street artist, who has been living with a roommate for more than two years, says housing has become unaffordable. He’s been picking up food delivery gigs to make ends meet.
Corey briefly looked for his own one-bedroom apartment, but says he was deterred after the asking rent jumped from $1,200 to $1,450 in a matter of weeks.
“It’s embarrassing but I really can’t afford to live alone,” the 34-year-old said. “It feels like every time I’m getting close to getting ahead and getting a little bit more stable, there’s a new challenge.”
About this story
Rent prices are for units in multi-family properties and based on estimates from CoStar Group. County data is shown where available and limited to counties with at least 1,000 multi-family rental units, according to the Census Bureau. Metro-area totals are based on weighted averages of counties with available data.
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By Abha Bhattarai
Abha Bhattarai is the economics correspondent for The Washington Post. She previously covered retail for the publication. Twitter
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By Chris Alcantara
Chris Alcantara is a graphics reporter at The Washington Post, where he uses code and data to report on business and technology. He joined The Post in 2016.
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By Andrew Van Dam
Andrew Van Dam covers data and economics. He previously worked for the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and the Idaho Press-Tribune. Twitter
| The text being discussed is available at | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/rising-rent-prices/ and |