Apartment Rents Rose 14% Last Month In the Biggest Jump in Over Two Years
Biggest increase was in Austin, where rents surged 40%, Redfin reported.
Average monthly listed rents in the US increased 14.1% year over year to $1,877 in December, according to a report issued by real estate brokerage firm Redfin.
This was the largest annual jump since at least February 2019—the earliest month in Redfin’s rental data.
Meanwhile, the national monthly mortgage payment for homebuyers climbed 21.6% year over year, also the biggest increase in Redfin’s records.
“The growth in mortgage payments has been driven by both climbing prices and climbing mortgage rates,” Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather said.
“And those rising mortgage costs push more potential homebuyers into renting instead, which pushes up demand and prices for rentals. Mortgage rate increases are accelerating, which will cause both mortgage payments and rent to grow throughout 2022.”
Year–over-year rent-price increases outpaced year-over-year mortgage payment increases for new homebuyers in just 16 of the 50 largest US metro areas in December.
Single-Family Rents Surging Too
Separately, single family rents are also on a tear, with the asset class rising 11.5% year-over-year in November, CoreLogic reported.
The increase hit a seventh consecutive record high.
“The November 2021 increase was more than three times the November 2020 increase, and while the index growth slowed in the summer of 2020, rent growth returned to its pre-pandemic rate by October 2020, CoreLogic Principal Economist Molly Boesel noted in unveiling the latest CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index.