Arlington saw the third highest month-over-month increase in apartment rents nationally in August, and now stands as the eighth priciest locality among 100 urban areas monitored by Apartment List.
The median rent for an apartment in Arlington stood at $2,318 in the new data, reported Aug. 30. That was up 0.9 percent from a month before, and represents an increase of 9.6 percent since a trough at the start of the year.
The onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 set the Arlington rental market on a roller-coaster ride, with year-end median prices down 13.6 percent in 2020 followed by a rebound (and then some) of 17.9 percent in 2021. The following year brought some stability, with rents increasing but by a more typical rate (4.5%), if one slightly elevated owing to the impact of inflation on the economy.
Arlington’s current rental rate stands 16 percent above the median for the D.C. region as a whole ($2,003) and is 69 percent higher than the national median apartment rental ($1,371).
Arlington’s month-to-month rent growth was third only to the California cities of Anaheim (+1.2%) and Irvine (+1.1%), and was tied with New York City among the 100 urban areas surveyed.
Nationally, the month-over-month rental rate declined 0.1 percent.
Across the fruited plain, the aforementioned Irvine, Calif., had the highest median rental rate for August ($3,113), while Cleveland had the lowest ($775). Cleveland also recorded the largest month-over-month drop in prices, at 2.9 percent.
Within the D.C. metro area, Apartment List’s analysts look at 33 different market areas. At a median rent of $2,371, Fair Oaks was most expensive for the month. (Among D.C.-metro jurisdictions, only Arlington and the District of Columbia are included in the national ranking of 100 urban areas.)
The slight decline nationally in median prices throughout the month of August was no surprise, as late summer traditionally heralds the beginning of the slow season for apartment-rental activity.
On a year-over-year basis, national median rents turned negative last month for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. The year-over-year decline of 1.2 percent represents a “major deceleration from recent years, when annual rent growth neared 18 percent nationally and soared to over 40 percent in a handful of popular cities,” Apartment List analysts said.
Rents fell month-over-month in August in 53 of the 100 urban areas reported, and year-over-year rents were down year-over-year in 72.
In early 2022, all 100 cities in the ranking were posting positive year-over-year rent increases. The first areas to turn negative were the “Zoom towns’’ in states like Arizona, Nevada and Idaho, which had surged in popularity in 2020 when much of the nation’s white-collar workforce went remote but the saw a pullback in demand as affordable options dissipated and more jobs were called back to city centers.
Since then, other areas have joined the trend toward lower rents, including much of the West Coast, Texas and the Southeast. Currently, the sharpest year-over-year decline can be found in Oakland, Calif., where prices are down 8.7 percent compared to last August.
At the other end of the spectrum, the fastest recent rent growth has been occurring in metropolitan areas across the Midwest and New England. But “given the recent rental-market cooldown, even these metros are experiencing relatively modest growth compared to what was measured at this time last year,” the Apartment List analysts said.
And there may be more price easing to come – overall, if not necessarily in every market – they opined.
“As apartment demand wanes throughout the remainder of the year, and apartment supply improves through a strong construction pipeline, expect rent growth to cool further for the remainder of the year,” analysts noted.
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For the full national report, see the Website at https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data. For the Arlington report, see the Website at https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/va/arlington.
