Tight For-Sale Market Leads to Record Price Spikes in the Rental Market

A supply-demand imbalance in the for-sale housing market will eventually spill into the rental market.

1 minute read

August 25, 2021, 9:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Rent

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"Soaring prices. Competition. Desperation. The dramatic conditions for U.S. homebuyers during the past year are now spilling into the market for rentals."

Prashant Gopal reports on the current realities of the rental market in the United States, where demand is being driven by overflow from a for-sale market that prices many potential buyers out—and into rental housing.

According to Gopal, the spike in rental prices are most acute in Sun Belt cities. "Landlords from Tampa, Florida, to Memphis, Tennessee, and Riverside, California, are jacking up rents at record speeds."

The demand for rental housing has reached record levels, according to the article. "The number of occupied U.S. rental-apartment units jumped by about half a million in the second quarter, the biggest annual increase in data going back to 1993, according to industry consultant RealPage Inc. Occupancy last month hit a new high of 96.9%."

According to data from RealPage, rents on newly signed leases surged 17 percent in July compared to the price paid by the previous tenant.

Wednesday, August 18, 2021 in Bloomberg BusinessWeek

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