When COVID-19 emerged in Spring 2020, the nation’s apartment operators (rightly) prioritized occupancy over pricing power, so they hesitated to push rents when initial leases expired for their existing customers.
Tag Archives: Rent Growth
U.S. apartment rent growth is back in a big way, now that the country’s reopening local economies are fueling household creation and stimulating robust demand for all types of housing.
Effective asking rents for U.S. apartments climbed 0.6% in February, rising at the fastest single-month pace seen since the middle of 2019.
At the end of 2020, annual effective asking rents for the nation overall were cut by 1.1%. Moving forward, however, pricing is expected to reach the breakeven point in the last half of 2021, and then growth could return, getting higher than 3% by the end of calendar 2022
It may sound like bad news for the apartment sector: rent growth may stay relatively flat in the second half as vacancies and interest rates climb. But multifamily analysts insist the sector is going to remain strong over the long-term as investors search for properties to buy.