2017-2018 Apartment Rental Statistics

It’s been a wild ride across the country as the apartment rental market continues to grow for most cities. Last year was interesting for the apartment rental market, for both owners and renters. While it was a relatively calm 12 months, with rents cooling down from a heated 2015, there were some rather dramatic turn of events in the industry with rent increases that surprised analysts to some degree.

Let’s break down the numbers to get a sense of what the market looks like in 2017 for a clear picture of the market’s growth and changes.

There are more than 111 million renters calling apartments home in the United Sates, with nearly 23 million landlords looking to fill their cozy spaces, according to the Rental Protection Agency. A new unit is rented every 80 seconds across the country with a new renter moving in their belongings to an apartment every 32 seconds. The bulk of rentals go to a single individual, with the average renter’s age running around 25-34 years old, filling up nearly 30 percent of the market. By state, the District of Columbia leads the pack with nearly 60 percent of its residents calling a rented apartment home. New York comes in at 47 percent and California and Hawaii follow closely, hovering around 43 percent each.  Close to that is the ASU college town of Apartments Tempe AZ with a 66% for rent rate.

Luxury Apartments For Rent

According to Apartment List National Rent Report, the national rent index has a month-over-month growth of .5 percent . While the index didn’t rise from June through December of 2016, rents began a steady climb with a healthy .5 percent rate increase in May and June.

Overall, the national rate growth is .3 percent over last year, according to Yardi Matrix. Renters forked over nearly an entire extra month for rent payments in six major U.S. cities in 2016. Of those, three cities were hit with a whopping double-digit gain in rents, Stockton, Colorado Springs and Sacramento, which recorded the largest year-over-year increase for last year.

The average spending on housing by renters is about 25-35 percent of their after-tax income, according to Apartments.com.

The apartment market is abundant with inventory, from spacious to charming. Once a renter finds the perfect abode, they tend to stay put, according to the National Apartment Association. The average annual rent in this country has increased over the last decade, on par with the increase in the average home price. In 1960, the annual rent was around $800 on average for apartments across the United States, which rose to nearly $1200 10 years later. By 1990, the average annual rent rose to more than $5,000 and in 2013, it capped out at nearly double that number.

The website Apartmentlist.com notes that a large portion of the 100 largest cities have had a positive year, with 92 getting positive growth for year-over-year and 89 getting a good bump in just last month. One of the fastest growing cities in the United States is Arlington, TX. That little big city just 30 minutes from Dallas is experiencing a rent increase of 9 percent over the past year and a big bump of 1.2 percent in June of 2017 alone. But across the big state of Texas, rents have fallen. The Gulf Coast of Texas saw a drop in rent rates. Corpus Christi and Houston dipped more than 2 percent over 2016 and the trend is expected to carry through 2017. But Anchorage has taken the worst hit for dips in 2017, with rents falling at almost 6 percent since the same time in 2016. There, the median 2-bedroom apartment will run a renter a little more than $1,000, much lower than June of 2016.