Single-Family Rent Price Growth Triples 2020 Rate in October, Says Report

Rent prices continued their strong upward movement into the fourth quarter of the year as vacancy rates remained near 25-year lows. Tight inventory in the for-sale market has also displaced many potential buyers and forced more demand into single-family rentals as their next best option.

“Single-family rent growth hit its sixth consecutive record high in October 2021, mirroring record price increases in the for-sale housing market,” said Molly Boesel, principal economist at CoreLogic. “Rent growth in October 2020 had already recovered from pre-pandemic lows and rent growth this October was more than three times that of a year earlier.”

To gain a detailed view of single-family rental prices, CoreLogic examines four tiers of rental prices. National single-family rent growth across the four tiers, and the year-over-year changes, were as follows:

• Lower-priced (75% or less than the regional median): 9.5%, up from 2.8% in October 2020
• Lower-middle priced (75% to 100% of the regional median): 10.1%, up from 2.8% in October 2020
• Higher-middle priced (100% to 125% of the regional median): 11.3%, up from 3% inOctober 2020
• Higher-priced (125% or more than the regional median): 11.4%, up from 3.5% in October 2020

Among the 20 metro areas shown in Table 1, Miami had the highest year-over-year increase in single-family rents in October 2021 at 29.7%, followed by Phoenix and Las Vegas at 19.3% and 16.5%, respectively. These major metros have continued to experience rapid growth as tourism returns and local labor markets improve. While Chicago logged the lowest annual rent price growth at 4.2% in October, this is still more than double its pre-pandemic growth rate.

Methodology

The single-family rental market accounts for half of the rental housing stock, yet unlike the multifamily market, which has many different sources of rent data, there are minimal quality adjusted single-family rent transaction data. The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI) serves to fill that void by applying a repeat pairing methodology to single-family rental listing data in the Multiple Listing Service. CoreLogic constructed the SFRI for close to 100 metropolitan areas — including 47 metros with four value tiers — and a national composite index.

The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index analyzes data across four price tiers: Lower-priced, which represent rentals with prices 75% or below the regional median; lower-middle, 75% to 100% of the regional median; higher-middle, 100%-125% of the regional median; and higher-priced, 125% or more above the regional median.

Median rent price data is produced monthly by CoreLogic RentalTrends. RentalTrends is built on a database of more than 11 million rental properties (over 75% of all U.S. individual owned rental properties) and covers all 50 states and 17,500 ZIP codes.