by Calculated Risk on 7/02/2024 12:45:00 PM

Today, in the Real Estate Newsletter: Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year

Brief excerpt:

Tracking rents is important for understanding the dynamics of the housing market. For example, the sharp increase in rents helped me deduce that there was a surge in household formation in 2021 (See from September 2021: Household Formation Drives Housing Demand). Now that household formation has slowed, and multi-family completions have increased, rents are under pressure.

From ApartmentList.com: Apartment List National Rent Report

Welcome to the July 2024 Apartment List National Rent Report. Rent prices ticked up for the fifth straight month, but rent growth over the course of 2024 as a whole remains modest, signaling ongoing sluggishness in the market. The national median rent increased by 0.4% in June and now stands at $1,411, but the pace of growth slowed slightly this month. This is typically the time of year when rent growth is accelerating amid the busy moving season, so sluggish growth this month indicates that the market is headed for another slow summer.

Since the second half of 2022, seasonal declines in rent prices have been steeper than usual and seasonal increases have been more mild. As a result, apartments are on average slightly cheaper today than they were one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth nationally currently stands at -0.7 percent and has now been in negative territory since last summer. But despite this cooldown, the national median rent is still more than $200 per month higher than it was just a few years ago.

Realtor.com: Tenth Consecutive Month with Year-over-year Decline in Rents

In May 2024, the U.S. median rent continued to decline year over year for the 10th month in a row, down 0.7% for 0-2 bedroom properties across the top 50 metros, on par with the rate seen in April 2024.

There is much more in the article.