Monthly rents for single-family homes in the U.S. were up 3% annually this past August — a figure that was essentially unchanged year over year, according to data analytics company CoreLogic.
CoreLogic’s Single-Family Rent Index was down 0.1 percentage points from August 2018, following similar scant changes that occurred from July 2018 to July 2019. After a trend of steady increases began in 2010, annual single-family rent growth has stabilized of late, falling to a clip of 2.9% to 3.2% increases for the past 12 months.
Rent growth in August of this year continued to be propelled by homes that rent for 75% or less of its region’s median price. Rents on these lower-priced homes grew 3.7% annually, up 0.2 percentage points from July of this year.
Conversely, rents for higher-priced homes — defined as properties that rent for more than 125% of the regional median price — grew 2.7% year over year. Rent growth in the lowest price tier has consistently outpaced both high-end rentals and the index as a whole since 2014. Prior to that, high-tier properties had posted greater rent-growth numbers on a monthly basis since the post-recession recovery period began.
Uneven rent growth persists across the country, however. For the ninth consecutive month, Phoenix posted the highest year-over-year single-family rent growth at 6.6%. Las Vegas (5.8%) and Tucson, Arizona (5.3%) were next in line, showing the Southwest region’s ongoing strength in the single-family rental market.
Although it posted a robust annual rent increase of more than 3.5% this past August, Orlando tied with Houston as the cities with the largest annual deceleration in rent growth. The two cities saw growth that was 2.1 percentage points lower than in August 2018. In contrast, Seattle and Honolulu, each saw single-family rent growth balloon by about 2 percentage points year over year.
