Apartment rents ticked up 0.6% in February, a pace that's more tepid than last summer's eye-popping increases but still above pre-pandemic norms. 

A new report from Apartment List notes that year-over-year rent growth currently stands at a "staggering" 17.6 percent, but most of that growth took place last spring and summer.  Over the last quarter, rents have gone up by just 0.7%. 

"This is a bit slower than the 0.8 percent increase that we saw last February, when the 2021 rent growth boom was just starting to pick up steam. It's also well below the 2.1 percent average monthly rent growth that we saw from last March through September," the report notes. "But even if growth has cooled down substantially from last summer's peak, it is also pacing well ahead of the pre-pandemic norm for this time of year. From 2017 to 2020, February rent growth averaged just 0.3 percent; this month's increase was double that rate."