Brief excerpt:
Tracking rents is important for understanding the dynamics of the housing market. For example, the sharp increase in rents helped me deduce that there was a surge in household formation in 2021 (See from September 2021: Household Formation Drives Housing Demand). Now that household formation has slowed, and multi-family completions have increased, rents are under pressure.
From ApartmentList.com: Apartment List National Rent Report
The national median rent increased by 0.5% in May and now stands at $1,404, but the pace of growth slowed slightly this month. This is typically the time of year when rent growth is accelerating amid the busy moving season, so sluggish growth this month indicates that the market is headed for another slow summer.
Since the second half of 2022, seasonal declines have been steeper than usual and seasonal increases have been more mild. As a result, apartments are on average slightly cheaper today than they were one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth nationally currently stands at -0.8 percent and has now been in negative territory since last summer.
CoreLogic: “Attached Single-Family Rental Prices Post First Annual Decrease in 14 Years”
U.S. single-family rent growth continued to slowly increase year over year in March to 3.4%.
After registering a 2.9% annual gain in February, attached rental appreciation lost ground in March, posting a -0.6% loss.
There is much more in the article.