How Much Did Your Rent Increase Between 2016 and 2017?

Photo credit: Christopher Paquette, CC BY 2.0.

Today in “the rent is too damn high,” we go to MarketWatch:

Collectively, American renters paid a total of $485.6 billion in 2017, up $4.9 billion from the $480.7 billion in 2016.

That’s a 1 percent increase overall, but — as the saying goes — it isn’t evenly distributed. Some cities, as MarketWatch reports, saw rents increase by more than 7 percent.

If you’re a renter, how much did you pay in rent last year? Was it more than what you paid in 2016? I spent $10,765 on 2017 rent, and it’s only lower than the $11,940 I paid in 2016 because I moved from Seattle to Cedar Rapids. Had I stayed where I was, I would have spent $12,215 — a 2.3 percent increase.

But I’ll only spend $7,800 on rent this year, thanks to my lower-cost-of-living move. (We’ll leave out the fact that the move cost me $5,929.10. We all agree to ignore that part, right?)


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