It’s happened for the first time in two years: The median monthly rents of one- and two-bedroom apartment units across the United States both declined in October.
According to the latest rent report from Zumper, the national one-bedroom median apartment rent fell 0.8% in October when compared to September. That figure stood at $1,491 in October. The median two-bedroom apartment rent in the United States dropped 0.7% in October when compared to September, falling to $1,832.
More than half of the 100 U.S. cities on Zumper’s list posted month-over-month declines in October, while 19 saw their median apartment rents remain flat.
The rent slowdown is showing up, too, in Zumper’s year-over-year figures. After 12 consecutive months of double-digit year-over-year median monthly rent jumps, the national median apartment rent this October is up only 9.2% when compared to the same month in 2021.
What’s behind the slowdow in monthly rent growth? Zumper cites the fear of a recession as the main reason. In a recent Zumper survey, 76.2% of U.S. respondents said that they thought the United States was already in a recession.
Rising interest rates and inflation, though, are keeping monthly rents from dropping too severely, Zumper reported. Rising interest rates are pushing potential buyers out of the single-family housing market. Because of this, apartment owners are still enjoying relatively strong competition for units. This will prevent more drastic drops in monthly rents, Zumper says.
“In many metro areas, declining prices are actually a correction to prices that’d become overly inflated,” said Zumper chief executive officer Anthemos Georgiades, in a statement. “We saw historic levels of migration throughout the pandemic, as people switched to working from home and re-imagined their living situations. Now, with a turbulent, unpredictable economy causing fear of recession, migrations are slowing, occupancy rates are falling and rent prices are following suit.”
