Amid the coronavirus pandemic, not much good news has emerged. But there is a small silver lining for renters.
In 2020, rent prices dropped, rather than increased in Atlanta.
The findings stem from Apartment List’s National Rent Report of 2021, which reviewed national rent trends amid the ongoing health crisis.
Using a new methodology that looks to identify transacted rent prices, rather than listed rent prices, “controls for price fluctuations that arise over the course of a vacancy,” the online marketplace stated. Transacted prices allow for rent growth rate calculations controlling for structural differences in the rental property.
“As before, we continue to combat luxury bias in our rent data by using fully-representative median rent statistics from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey,” the site said.
According to the rent report, recent rent trends are in line with previous years; rents in December usually decline. However, looking at the months between March and June — when things began and continued to shutter around the country amid the pandemic — spring moving plans were put on the backburner. It was during the aforementioned months that prices steadily decreased. That’s the opposite of what usually occurs in the spring and summer, as a busy rental market season means apartment prices rise, rather than fall.
In Atlanta, rent prices dropped 1.6% in March and had a 0.1% decrease in rent month over month. Year over year, that’s a 1.3% decrease. Nationally, rent was down 1.5% year over year and 0.4% month over month.
One-bedroom Atlanta apartments were $1,179 on average while it cost an average of $1,187 to rent a two-bedroom apartment.
Although rents have appeared to stabilize across the country in recent months, there are high regional variations.
While 65 of the 100 biggest U.S. cities had lower rents in December, that number is 57 this year. Fewer cities saw rents fall, but they became more inexpensive more quickly than before.
“This aggregates to a national trend that appears similar to previous winters but hides some new trends,” Apartment List explained. “Most notably, the nation’s smaller, more-affordable markets have absorbed most of the summer’s rent rebound, while larger, more-expensive markets have been saddled with unrelenting price drops.”
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