Rents In These American Cities Have Soared

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 9, 10:21AM EDT

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Rents In These American Cities Have Soared — © kenlund / Flickr

The COVID-19 pandemic has reordered where people want to live across much of the U.S. Large cities have been hit hard, particularly New York and the large metros on the West Coast as people move to more suburban and rural places in the interior of the nation. The flight has been helped by low mortgage rates and a steady income for many middle and upper-class Americans. The activity has actually driven down the supply of homes as they are often snapped up in days after they go on the market.

The apartment market has followed a pattern that is not dissimilar. A new report from Apartment.com shows migration to smaller cities, and, in many cases, ones that are much less expensive than the largest metros. The migration, in turn, has brought down apartment prices in the largest metros. Unexpectedly, cities that have been losing population for decades are cities where rents have surged the most. With the exception of low mortgage rates, the reasons for relocation likely have characteristics similar to home buying.

Apartment.com breaks its analysis of apartment rents into apartment sizes. Its experts point out:

On a national level, we’re noticing a shift in recent patterns. Studios and one-bedrooms are showing some recovery in price, possibly reflecting growing demand. Two-bedrooms have adjusted down slightly, but are still up more than five percent year-over-year. Three-bedrooms are up, both since last month and since this time last year.

Based on city average rents for studios and one-bedroom, rents in some blighted urban areas have gone up sharply. These include Detroit and Buffalo.

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These are the cities where rents have gone up the most in April year over year, based on the top 100 metros determined by population:

Kansas City, MO (+33.5%)
Gilbert, AZ (+26.0%)
Las Vegas, NV (+25.3%)
Riverside, CA (+24.9%)
Buffalo, NY (+23.3%)
Columbus, OH (+22.1%)
Durham, NC (+20.0%)
Detroit, MI (+18.6%)
New Orleans, LA (+18.3%)
Virginia Beach, VA (+15.3%)

Click here to read These Are The U.S. Cities Where Home Prices Are Falling Fastest

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.