Free Republic

Key Points: The national median rent for apartments fell 1% in November from October, and now stands at $1,367, according to Apartment List. The national multifamily vacancy rate was 7.2% in November, a record high. The historic surge in multifamily construction over the past few years is now pulling back, but a good supply of new units is still coming online at a time of much weaker demand. A slew of new supply is still making its way through the multifamily housing market. That, coupled with weakening demand, especially from the youngest workers, is pushing vacancies up and rents down....

Those of us fortunate enough to live anywhere but New York City may take comfort from reading the news about what is arguably NYC’s biggest campaign issue in 2025 -- the lack of affordable housing in the nation’s biggest city. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we may say, shaking our heads in flyover country, where apartment rents and home prices may also be too high, but where there is at least some kind of availability. But NYC’s problem is only local in part; many of the inputs are nationwide issues, which a new mayor, regardless of...

According to a report from the nonprofit group Child Care Aware of America, child care costs have surged significantly, surpassing average rent payments for families with more than one child across all 50 U.S. states. Here are the key findings: National Average: The national average cost for child care increased by 3.7% from 2022 to 2023. Families with two kids in a child care center pay an average of about $20,000 yearly across the Midwest, South, and West. In the Northeast, the cost is even higher, exceeding $32,000 annually.

Pay day seriously pales compared to rent day — and it’s only getting worse. A new report has found that, since 2019, rent has gone up on average 1.5 times faster than wages in 44 out of the nation’s 50 largest metros, and nowhere more so than in New York City. According to an analysis by StreetEasy of data from Zillow, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and its own site, the Big Apple has seen the greatest gap in rent growth relative to wage growth in recent years. Specifically, the city watched wages go up 1.2% between 2022 and...

Americans looking for shelter from inflation are unlikely to find any at home. Inflation under the Biden administration has sent the costs of maintaining a household soaring. Rent, electricity, and garbage collection prices are all up nearly six percent. The price of rent and associated shelter costs have jumped more than five percent since March 2023: — Owners’ equivalent rent (the opportunity cost of not renting out the home you own): Up 5.9 percent since March 2023 / Up 0.4 percent since February 2024 — Water and sewer maintenance services: Up 5.1 percent since March 2023 / Up 0.5 percent...

Median rent in the U.S. rose for the third consecutive month in March, up 0.8 percent from a year ago to $1,987, according to a new report from real estate company Redfin. While rents had decreased nationally during the preceding three-month period, rental prices have started to tick up again, as has inflation. Redfin pointed to high mortgage rates — driven by high borrowing costs set by a committee of Federal Reserve officials — as a contributing factor. More people are putting off buying a home and opting to rent, driving up demand for rental units.

President Joe Biden is complaining “rents are too high” after he deliberately imported 10 million rent-spiking legal and illegal migrants into Americans’ neighborhoods. The sudden, election-year complaint was posted on March 14 by Politico.com, which did not mention Biden’s decision to import millions of new immigrant-renters: Biden has repeatedly pressed his senior staff for new ways to make homes more affordable and available, quizzing aides on mortgage rates and rental prices. He’s also demanded details on the burden that housing inflation has placed on families’ monthly budgets, according to two senior White House officials, who were granted anonymity to describe...

As the United States strives to regain a sense of normalcy after the pandemic, a growing financial concern is looming over the nation. According to Bloomberg, the cost of living has surged in various aspects, with groceries marking a 25% increase, used cars seeing a staggering 35% climb, and rents escalating by approximately 20%. While daily routines may have returned to a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, the financial burden on Americans is far from abating. A recent CNBC report reveals that a staggering 74% of Americans are currently experiencing stress due to their financial situations. The reasons behind this financial...

Rents are up nationwide, and that’s a real problem for lots of folks living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s interesting, as a new article points out, that rents are down in the Austin area while being up in San Jose, when you consider the laws of supply and demand, and the population flows to/from those areas. Now, we see Illinois passing a new law prohibiting landlords from screening their prospective tenants’ immigration status, and you’re liable to see more rent defaults in that state—something that we’ll want to watch for in rental property trends in 2024.But there is more to it than just...

Blood is spattered across the ceiling of a laundry room, a few feet from Laurie-Ann Mills’ apartment, likely from people who break into the complex and use intravenous drugs hastily or incorrectly. A gap between her apartment door and the frame allows noise to easily travel into Mills’ apartment. Her countertops are peeling. Several electrical outlets are broken. A sink in her living room produces yellow water. Her dishwasher leaks onto the kitchen floor. One-half of her apartment occasionally loses power. Cars, packages and apartments are repeatedly broken into or stolen. And a neighbor, who has since moved, was stabbed...

All this is happening as the Biden administration oversees historic waves of legal and especially illegal immigration to America. Biden cited a study showing a shortfall of more than 1.5 million residential units nationwide. This has spiked housing prices and raised rents to the highest levels on record. Myopic media outlets, blinkered academics and craven politicians don’t connect the dots, but the annual influx of millions of immigrants is clearly inflating the demand in an already overheated market for housing and increasing costs commensurately. Apologists for the immigration lobby blame zoning laws, local officials and every other conceivable scapegoat. Yet...

Rents fell annually for the first time in three years last month, reaching the lowest median asking rent in more than a year, according to data released Friday by real estate brokerage Redfin. Median asking rents dropped 0.4 percent year over year to $1,937 in March — marking the first annual decline since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. The median asking rent rose more than 17 percent between 2021 and 2022. Redfin analyzed rent prices from Rent., an apartment rental listing website, across the 50 largest U.S. metros, using data from more than 20,000 apartment buildings nationwide. Redfin’s...

Half of American renters — or 25 million people — now spend more than 30 percent of their pre-tax income on housing amid President Joe Biden’s wage-cutting, rent-spiking welcome for mass migration. “The national average rent-to-income (RTI) reached 30% for the first time in our 20+ years of tracking history, up 1.5% from year-ago,” said a housing report by the Wall Street firm of Moody’s Analytics. “Rent … rose faster than incomes” in 75 metro areas, the report said.

Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) campaign has paid tens of thousands of dollars for plane rentals to an Arizona-based company that has been awarded lucrative contracts from the Department of Defense (DOD), including one contract funded by legislation Kelly voted for. One of three contacts awarded to Newton Consulting & Engineering, Inc. (NCE) came last year after Kelly had been conducting business with the company and was serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In fact, Kelly voted for the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gave the DOD funding it ultimately drew from for the contract. Of note, the...

Rents across the United States have hit a record high, with the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment now reaching nearly $1,500 a month, according to the Zumper National Rent Index. The sky-high rents are up almost 12 percent compared to the same time last year, the analysis finds. The jump in rents now beats out last year’s record rents.

John Oliver on Sunday pointed out that housing is now “the thing a 16-year-old TikTok millionaire can afford and you can’t.” (Watch the video below.) On “Last Week Tonight” the host took aim at skyrocketing rents and some of the greedy attitudes behind them.

Median rents in the US crossed the $2000 mark this past month for the first time ever, while rental markets surged 15% – 20% in a single year depending on the region. This is yet another trend which supports the position that official CPI is inaccurate and overall inflation is actually much higher than the central bank and the Biden White House reports. The latest CPI print indicates an “official” inflation rate of 8.6%, while REAL inflation is closer to 17% according to pre-1990s calculations. The continued denial of real inflation rates is causing confusion among Americans who are facing...

Rental prices for single-family homes have skyrocketed to record levels across the U.S., increasing to an average of 7.8 percent in 2021. Apartment rents are up too. “Of the markets in our analysis, 97.7 percent recorded price increases for one-bedrooms and all markets saw increases for two-bedrooms [100 percent],” the report, issued last month, said. “Nationwide rent prices have increased significantly year-over-year. One- and two-bedroom rents were up 24.4 percent and 21.8 percent, respectively.”

President Joe Biden’s deputies are taking $377 million from GOP-run heartland states to aid landlords in four Democrat-run states that use illegal migration to inflate their economies, according to a report in the New York Times. White House officials have already pressured governors in states to shift $875 million for poor renters into urban districts, the newspaper reported March 16, adding:

Rents in Manhattan are once again hitting new record highs, after cratering during the pandemic. The median monthly rent for a Manhattan apartment was a record $3,700 in February. That was up 24% from a year ago and up an unusually large 4.2% from January, according to a report from brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel. "What we're seeing is a rapid rebound and an unprecedented climb in rental prices," said Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel. "In all categories, everything is going up."