The number of people renting apartments fell in 2017, the first time this population has seen a decrease in 13 years, another sign that the multifamily boom that developers have enjoyed for so long might be in the early stages of tailing off.
Of course, the slight dip in renter households didn’t stop landlords from raising rents, as the median rents for both one-bedroom and two-bedroom units continued to rise last year.
Those are the two key points from the 2017 Annual Rent Report released ealier this month by ABODO.
According to the report, the natinal median rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose 2.4 percent throughout 2017. As of the end of the year, this figure stood at $1,040 a month. The median rent for two-bedroom apartments hit $1,252 in December, a jump of 3 percent from January of 2017.
Overall, apartment rents rose in 28 states last year, fell in 21 and remained unchanged in one, South Dakota. The states with the highest rents were all on the coasts, according to ABODO. The Midwest, though, did see one state that ranked among the bottom-five when it came to monthly apartment rents. That was Kansas, where the median one-bedroom apartment rent ended 2017 at $631, higher than only New Mexico and Idaho.
One Midwest city, though, did see a big increase in monthly rents throughout 2017. ABODO reported that the median one-bedroom rent in Cleveland rose 1.9 percent during 2017, ending the year at $657. The city saw the sixth-highest increase in rents in 2017.
More common were Midwest cities in which apartment rents fell throughout the year. Fort Wayne, Indiana, saw the biggest dip in rents, with its median one-bedroom rent falling 2.8 percent to $526 by the end of the year. Lincoln, Nebraska, came in second, with its median one-bedroom rent dipping 2.2 percent to $673.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, this figure dropped 1.7 percent to $1,223. In Nashville, it dropped 1.6 percent to $1,354, while in Wichita, Kansas, the median one-bedroom rent fell 1 percent to end 2017 at $536.
Chicago made ABODO’s year-end list, too, finishing 2017 with the eighth-highest rents in the country. ABODO reported that Chicago’s median one-bedroom rent stood at $1,805 as December of last year.
