Every roller coaster eventually returns to the station, and when it comes to the past 18 months in apartment-rental costs, it appears one cycle of ups and downs is coming to an end.
And the impact is being felt in Arlington as well as across the nation.
Wild increases in rental prices that followed a decline – sometimes significant – in many of the nation’s urban areas appear to be calming, and perhaps returning to a more cyclical seasonality.
“The market remains extremely tight, but we’ve not seen continued signs of that pressure gradually beginning to ease,” said the Nov. 30 analysis of Apartment List, which tracks the 100 largest urban markets on a monthly basis.
Nationally, rents were up a modest 1 percent from a month before, although in Arlington they were down 1.1 percent (to a median $2,014 for one-bedroom units and $2,437 for two-bedroom units). Arlington was among 53 of the 100 tracked urban areas to post month-over-month declines.
But that’s a case of simply giving back some accumulated gains.
“Since January, the national median rent has increased by a staggering 17.8 percent,” noted analysts Chris Salvati, Igor Popov, Rob Warnock and Lilla Szini. That compared to a more normal increase of about 2.6 percent from January to November.
With a handful of exceptions – noted below – most of the 100 areas tracked now report median rental prices above where they stood at the start of the pandemic. In Arlington, despite the ups and downs, rents are up by 2.1 percent.
But there are some exceptions: San Francisco remains down 14 percent from the start of the pandemic, Oakland 10 percent, Minneapolis 7 percent, San Jose 6 percent, the District of Columbia 2 percent and Fremont (Calif.) 2 percent. Seattle remains essentially flat.
The highest increase are concentrated in three metropolitan areas – Tampa, Phoenix and Las Vegas – where median rental rates are up 30 percent or more. Topping the list this month is North Las Vegas, up 38 percent from a year ago, followed by Glendale (Ariz.), up 37 percent.
Boise, which has led the pack in appreciation for most of the pandemic era, has seen rents fall back in recent months, and in the latest figures its appreciation rate is not even in the top 10.
The fall-to-winter period traditionally sees a slackening of demand for apartments, with prices flat or trending downward. That is likely to be the case in coming months, as national vacancy rates, while still low by historic norms at 4.2 percent, have been rising for the past three months.
For full details, see the Website at https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data.