The rise of remote work led to a mass exodus from U.S. cities throughout 2020 and 2021, resulting in a drastic increase in the number of empty apartments and forcing landlords to slash rents. By the end of 2021, however, that trend had reversed, and by 2022, median rent in Manhattan had reached an all-time high. Between 2021 and 2022, rents rose 17% in Chicago, 13% in Seattle, and 10% in Washington, D.C., Insider reports.
Those rising rents aren’t because Americans are moving back to major cities. Instead, more single-occupant households are filling those inventory gaps and keeping cost high, even as the total share of renters continues to fall.
The widespread adoption of remote work gave many people the chance to abandon expensive, dense places for cheaper locations in the suburbs or other parts of the country. But this shift also led to stark changes within big cities: People struck out on their own or broke into smaller units. Recent college grads decided to move out of their parents' houses, roommates ditched their cramped quarters for places of their own, and couples broke up and got separate places. In aggregate, these kinds of decisions created thousands of home hunters, all jostling for a relatively fixed number of units.
Advertisement
Related Stories
Off-Site Construction
New Study Examines Barriers and Solutions in Manufactured Housing
The study from Harvard's Joint Center looks at the challenges faced by developers using manufactured housing and how they're overcoming those barriers
Affordability
The Disappearing Act That Is Middle-Income Housing
An expert weighs in on the diminishing supply of middle-income housing, which is particularly acute in California, and what to do about it
Off-Site Construction
Utah Passes Bill to Regulate Modular Construction at the State Level
Goals for housing innovation and affordability meet in the Utah's passage of a new bill that establishes a statewide modular construction program