Want to Know How Much Rent Has Gone Up in Just One Month?

Want to Know How Much Rent Has Gone Up In Just One Month?

You probably don’t, but we’re going to tell you anyway.

I follow the Seattlish blog, and yesterday they ran a post titled RENTS AND HOME PRICES BOTH REACH PEAK HIGHS SO GUESS WE’D BETTER JUST START PACKING NOW.

How much did Seattle rents jump between April and May? Eleven percent.

If you signed a lease starting on May 1, you might be paying eleven percent more than if you’d signed that lease thirty days earlier.

There are probably a few grains of salt rattling around in this statistic; Seattlish got it from Curbed, which got it from Abodo’s National Apartment Report, and by the time I’m writing about it we’re dealing with, like, a quaternary source here.

ABODO National Apartment Report: May 2016

But I think the statistic might be accurate, give or take a few outliers. When I checked Craigslist to confirm rental prices on apartments similar to my current smallish, no-frills one-bedroom, I found a lot of comparable places in comparable neighborhoods running in the $1,100–1,200 range.

I’m currently paying $995 for my apartment, so in this case I could theorize that rent has gone up between 11-20 percent since last October. Did the bulk of that rate increase happen between April and May? No idea.

Now it’s your turn, because Abodo has a chart listing April-to-May rent increases in numerous cities:

Is Abodo right? Are rents going up at about these rates—and are they seriously jumping this much in a single month?

I didn’t even touch on the “home prices are at peak highs” part of the Seattlish post, but here’s a quick summary: home prices are at peak highs, especially in Portland and Seattle. In other words: we aren’t going to get out of this terrible rental market by buying.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.