Residential Real Estate News
Rent Growth for Single Family Homes Continues to Slow in May
Based on CoreLogic's latest Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI), annual U.S. rental growth continued to ease in May 2023, ending the month at 3.4%. Despite the past year's continuously slowing rent growth, the overall rate of increase is roughly back to its pre-pandemic norm recorded between 2010 and 2019.
Notably, the Chicago metro topped the nation for annual rent growth, while New York and Boston also landed in the top five. Similar to trends observed in the latest US CoreLogic S&P Case-Shiller Index, steadily increasing rents in these areas likely reflects rebounding housing demand, as some office workers gradually return from remote jobs.
"After increasing at an accelerated pace for more than two years, annual single-family rent growth returned to the pre-pandemic rate in May," said Molly Boesel, principal economist for CoreLogic. "High inflation may be affecting renters' abilities to absorb continually higher monthly payments, which could be keeping year-over-year rent increases relatively low. However, even in the current economic environment, monthly single-family rent increases returned to a typical seasonal pattern in February of this year, suggesting that single-family rents are poised to continue increasing throughout 2023."
To gain a detailed view of single-family rental prices across different market segments, CoreLogic examines four tiers of rental prices and two property-type tiers. National single-family rent growth across those tiers, and the year-over-year changes, were as follows:
- Lower-priced (75% or less than the regional median): up 5.6%, down from 14.4% in May 2022
- Lower-middle priced (75% to 100% of the regional median): up 4.3%, down from 14.8% in May 2022
- Higher-middle priced (100% to 125% of the regional median): up 3.7%, down from 14.9% in May 2022
- Higher-priced (125% or more than the regional median): up 2.1%, down from 13% in May 2022
- Attached versus detached: Attached single-family rental prices grew by 4.2% year over year in May, compared with the 2.5% increase for detached rentals
Of the 20 metros, Chicago posted the highest year-over-year increase in single-family rents in May 2023, at 6.6%. Charlotte, North Carolina registered the second-highest annual gain at 5.9%, followed by Boston and New York (both 5.7%). Las Vegas saw an annual rent price decline of -1.3%.
