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- Rent prices have jumped as much as 13% nationwide since last year, according to Zumper data.
- That's compared to a 1% increase in 2020 and stagnant growth the year prior.
- The trend is driven by demand from multiple generations and mirrors the frenzied sales market.
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Rent prices are skyrocketing.
Since March 2020, the median price for a one-bedroom apartment has gone up 10.7% nationwide, and the price of a two-bedroom apartment has ballooned even more, by 13.1%, according to a report from rental platform Zumper.
"To have double-digit rent growth over the course of a year-and-a-half is a shocking level of growth, especially considering the vast majority of it has come in the last nine months," Jeff Andrews, the author of the report, wrote.
That spike is particularly alarming when you compare it to previous years: In 2020, rent increased by 1% compared to the year prior; in 2019, rent prices stayed the same from the previous year, Zumper found.
The pandemic-era price surge is most apparent in cities like New York and Miami, as well as smaller markets like Scottsdale, Arizona. The Phoenix area has seen a population boom over the last decade, and the pandemic set the local housing market on fire. As a result, the median price of a one-bedroom in Scottsdale is now $1,850, making it the 10th-most expensive place to rent in the country, according to Zumper.
High prices and no more concessions
The rental frenzy comes after a feverish year for home sales.
As the pandemic revealed the possibilities of remote work and shut down many of the perks of urban living, office workers migrated to suburbs and lower-cost cities nationwide. They quickly snapped up homes, which sent prices climbing, led inventory to dip to historic lows, and sparked harried bidding wars that boxed out first-time homebuyers.
Now, the rental market in cities across the county is becoming similarly heated. Whereas rent prices in New York City dropped 15.5% in Manhattan and 8.6% in Brooklyn and Queens in January 2021, according to real estate platform StreetEasy's Rental Report, they didn't stay there - by August, New York surpassed San Francisco as the nation's most expensive rental market.
As Insider's Taylor Borden reported, the 30 largest US cities saw a surge in rental applications during the first half of 2021, according to research from RentCafé. Those applications are being submitted three generations of renters flooding the market: Gen Zers moving out of their parents house, millennials moving to new cities, and Boomers selling their homes and downsizing to rentals.
That influx is causing prices to soar, and while rent concessions in places like New York City were common in 2020, they're not anymore. Landlords are raising prices and dropping perks like free months of rent in an attempt to recoup money lost last year - in fact, the number of rentals offering incentives for renters in New York dipped to 39% this summer, compared to a peak of 60% last October, according to a report from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Douglas Elliman.
Unfortunately for hopeful city-dwellers, rent inflation probably won't subside anytime soon: Robert Pinnegar, president of the National Apartment Association, told Insider in July that he estimated that rental prices will continue to climb for the next 12 to 18 months.