Apartment landlords continued to push through hefty rent hikes in the second quarter, squeezing U.S. households that already are struggling financially after four years of steady increases.
The average monthly rent for an apartment rose to $1,099 in the second quarter, up 0.8% from the first quarter, according to data to be released Wednesday by real-estate research firm Reis Inc. REIS +0.18% That was the 18th consecutive quarter of rent increases. For the 12-month period ended in June, rents rose 3.4%.
Effective rents—which tend to be lower than asking rents—were up in all 79 U.S. metro areas tracked in the Reis report. West Coast cities that have been the model of recovery continued to top the list of highest rent growth for the quarter and over the past 12
Rent growth exceeded 6% over the past year in San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle.
Even cities that aren’t normally associated with fast rent growth, such as Charleston, S.C., and Nashville, Tenn., posted strong growth over the year, up about 5% or more for the year.
“You have definitely seen that recovery now spread to all of the major markets around the country, even if some of them were laggards,” said Ryan Severino, an economist at Reis. “It’s a very pervasive recovery.”