9.6% Drop in Median Rents Is Deceptive

A drop in rent is good if you’re a renter, right? Wrong. The 9.6% drop in median rents from a year ago is just the tip of the iceberg. What this number doesn’t tell you is that’s just face value, and doesn’t include concessions . When you dive deeper you find that landlords are only offering an average of one month free rent instead of two-and-a-half months, which was the average last year. So, effectively, rent has actually gone UP 3.9%. The devil is always in the details.

Other details that are favorable to landlords: days on the market have dropped by more than half from last year; and listing inventory has dropped by more than 25%.

Source: Curbed

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