Apartment living isn’t getting any cheaper, with the amount that renters are paying each month in rent rising yet again in May.
The most recent Yardi Matrix multifamily report said that the nationwide average apartment rent rose $10 in May to $1,204. That is an all-time high for apartment rents.
According to the report, rents rose by an average of 0.9 percent in May. They also rose 6 percent when compared to the same month one year earlier.
The high rents, though, haven’t kept tenants from renting apartments at a brisk clip. Yardi Matrix says that occupancy rates stood at 96 percent in April, up by a percentage point from a year earlier. The multifamily occupancy rate has been at least 95 percent for the last two years, according to Yardi Matrix.
Yardi Matrix studies 111 major markets across the United States in its report. Several Midwest markets saw solid rent apartment rent growths. In Chicago, Yardi Matrix expects that apartment rents will have grown 2 percent by the time 2016 comes to an end. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, that figure stands at 1.5 percent.
In the Nashville and Knoxville areas, though, apartment rents are expected to rise an even higher 4 percent by the time 2016 ends. And in the Kansas City area, apartment rents should rise 3.1 percent by the end of the year.
