Rents across nation continue rapid rise

Rents continue to rise at the fastest pace in decades, making housing costlier than ever for many Americans.

Nationally, rents rose a record 11.3 percent last year, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group. That fast pace of growth remained elevated in the first months of 2022, as many parts of the country continued to notch double-digit jumps in rent prices.

“A supply-demand mismatch is making rents unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The lowest-income families are being hardest hit by rising rents and a lack of supply.”

The number of people — particularly younger Americans — looking for their own apartments is squeezing an already-tight housing market. At the same time, pandemic-related material shortages and construction delays are slowing down the production of new homes and rentals. Experts like Shea say the shortfall of affordable rentals is likely to get even worse in the coming months, as mortgage rates, already reaching highs not seen since 2011 thanks to rising interest rates, drive would-be homeowners to rent instead.

Although few places in the United States have escaped recent hikes, rental spikes have been particularly pronounced along the Sun Belt and in Florida.

And although early in the pandemic, many cities, states and management companies placed limits on rent increases and in some cases, froze prices altogether, most of those measures have expired. In some cases, renters say landlords are factoring in two years’ worth of increases when leases renew.

Overall, CoStar is forecasting another 6 percent rise in U.S. rents this year, about double pre-pandemic norms.

The burden of rising rents falls heaviest on younger households, as well as on Black and Hispanic families, further exacerbating long-simmering inequalities.

Nationwide, about two-thirds of American families owned their homes as of the end of 2021, according to the Census Bureau, but the same release shows a majority of Black and Hispanic families rent their homes or apartments, while just over a quarter of their white peers do the same.

Separately, 62 percent of families with heads of household under age 35 rent, compared with 30 percent of households with a head between ages 45 and 54.