Rents Rise in Western Markets

From Dow Jones Newswires:

“At least someone in the housing market is happy: landlords.
Even as prices of homes for sale decline, data show that rental prices are rising in the vast majority of markets nationwide, putting pressure on the pocketbooks of the nearly one-third of Americans who rent rather than own their homes.”

From The Seattle Times:

“Apartment rents throughout the western United States are rising amid tougher borrowing standards that have made it more difficult for many people to buy a home.

The average cost of renting an apartment last month increased from last year in all 20 major Western markets covered in a quarterly survey released this past week by the Novato, Calif.-based research firm RealFacts.

The severity of the rent increases varied, rising by double digits in Silicon Valley and Seattle, while hovering in a range of 1 to 2.5 percent in much of California's Central Valley, Las Vegas and Colorado Springs, Colo.”

From The Los Angeles Times:

“…some analysts said they had been expecting to see even higher prices given the housing market meltdown, which turns many potential home buyers into renters.

‘The supply and demand for the housing market are interrelated with the supply and demand of the apartment market,’ said Delores Conway, director of USC's Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast. Now, with tougher lending standards and a shaky housing market, ‘more people are choosing to rent rather than to buy.’”