Those angling to snag an apartment in Tysons generally are paying about the same as a year ago, according to new data.
With a median apartment-rental rate of $2,029 for a one-bedroom unit and $2,425 for two bedrooms in August, the corridor’s year-over-year cost was down 0.1 percent from a year ago despite a 0.6-percent increase month-over-month.
That’s according to data reported Aug. 30 by Apartment List.
Tysons’ current rental rate stands above the median for the D.C. region as a whole ($2,003) and is well above than the national median apartment rental ($1,371).
And its month-over-month increase marks a divergence from the national apartment market, which saw median rental prices dip 0.1 percent.
Among the nation’s 100 largest urban areas ranked each month by Apartment List – which locally include the District of Columbia as well as Arlington – Arlington’s month-to-month rent growth of 0.9 percent was third only to the California cities of Anaheim (+1.2%) and Irvine (+1.1%), and was tied with New York City.
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, among the 100 corridors.
Within the D.C. metro area, Apartment List’s analysts look at 33 distinct market areas. Among them, Fair Oaks was most expensive for the month with a median rent of $2,371.
(Like Tysons, figures for Fair Oaks are broken out and reported individually, but the corridor is not large enough to be counted among the 100 largest on the national report.)
The slight decline nationally in median prices throughout the month of August likely 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 urban areas in the national 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.
