There’s a new four letter word out there that can send shivers down your spine. It is a word that has just risen to prominence in the past few years and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. The word in question is “rent.”
There is some good news associated with this four letter word; rents in the nation’s top 25 rental markets have slightly decreased, emphasis on slightly. But, as Trulia reports, rental homes are still expensive and in some places costs are rising.
From 2015 to 2016, rents in the 25 metro areas with the largest rental markets dropped 1.6 percent. However, when compared with historical numbers, rents are still very high and have become less affordable in areas that had been financially accessible.
Take the Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley metro area in California. In 2015 66 percent of the city’s rental listings were affordable.One year later in April 2016, that number had fallen to 46.2 percent, a 19.8 percent drop, the largest in the country. Orange County, Calif., and the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area in Arizona also saw huge drops in their share of affordable rental listings with a 10.8 percent drop and a 9/4 percent drop respectively.
Miami ($1,950 median monthly rent), New York ($2,354) and San Francisco ($3,500) are the least affordable rental markets in the country with corresponding shares of affordable rental properties of 6.9 percent, 19.6 percent, and 22.2 percent.
On the other hand, Dallas saw its share of affordable housing increase by 7.9 percentage points while Chicago’s increased by 8.5 percentage points and Philadelphia’s increased by 10. These three cities represent the cities were the proportion of affordable housing increased the most.
For a detailed look at cities with the most expensive rents, follow the link below.
