Inman

Rent surges nationally, but single-family prices grow steadily at 2.7%

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Even as rent continue to increase across the country, one demographic can breath a sigh of relief: single-family rent has grown at the same rate as one year earlier, according to CoreLogic’s Single-Family Rent Index, released Tuesday.

Rent for single-family homes across 20 of the country’s largest metropolitan areas has grown steadily between 2010 and 2018 — the average cost of renting a 2-bedroom apartment was, in May of this year, $1,174. Rent increase has stayed at 2.7 percent since March 2017, according to the analytics provider.

“The National Single-Family Rent Index continues to grow at a rate of 2.7 percent year-over-year,” said CoreLogic Principal Economist Molly Boesel in a prepared statement issued Tuesday. “Most metropolitan areas are seeing steady rent increases both month-over-month and year-over-year, with southern metros showing the fastest growth.”

Median rent overall reached a peak at $1,001 on average in 2016, when the average rent rose 4.2 percent from 2015, according to the CoreLogic index.

Still, some pockets of the country are seeing growth more rapidly than others. Rent rates increased the fastest in Las Vegas (5.5 percent), Phoenix (5.4 percent) and Orlando (5.2 percent). While Chicago had the lowest overall rent growth (0.6 percent), Honolulu was the only metropolitan area in which rents decreased by 0.4 percent.

CoreLogic

Low construction, strong local economies and low rental vacancies all contributed to an increase in the cost of rent, according to the CoreLogic report.

Email Veronika Bondarenko