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Rents fall in most U.S. metros since 2023, demand struggles to match supply
- andsoitis 1y agowhat's a good way to reconcile this with the common narrative that there's a big housing shortage?
- hiddencost 1y agoRents are still too damn high. The shortage will be over when rent is less than 10% of take home pay for a lower class laborer in NYC.
- speff 1y agoHas rent ever been 10% of take-home pay of a lower-class laborer anywhere in history? Asking because this goal doesn't seem very achievable, but I could be wrong
- tehjoker 1y agoit was 2% in the soviet union
- bufferoverflow 1y agoExcept Soviet Union made you work for near slave wages. I would choose NYC over it 100% of the time.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago2% of slave wages is actually even more impressive.
- nh23423fefe 1y agoexplain. if i dont pay my slaves what they are worth, why is it a good deal to take more money from them?
- tehjoker 1y agoEasy: they weren't slaves, that's just anti-communist rhetoric.
- nh23423fefe 1y agopolemic? not explanation.
- bufferoverflow 1y agoThey were not allowed to leave. Most of their products of labor was taken. They were slaves. And yes, I'm against communism partly because of that. It's an awful ideology.
- tehjoker 1y agoI think if you are looking for slaves, you should look at American history. What products of your labor do you keep in this country if you are not a business owner? I am not a fan of all the choices the USSR made, but you are mischaracterizing a society under siege by the capitalist west.
- speff 1y agoAh yea, it looks like that's true. I didn't calculate the actual percentages, but it was very low. Thanks for the heads up - > Demand for housing also remains heavy because Soviet rents, heavily subsidized by the Government, are very low. A modest two‐room apartment will en for 6 to 8 rubles ($8 to $11.30) a month, including some utilities. A four‐room apartment wil rent for 14 to 16 rubles ($18.20 to $22.30). Apartments in more modern buildings cost more because of additional services. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/11/archives/in-soviet-ingenuity-is-needed-to-find-an-apartment-in-soviet.html?smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/11/archives/in-soviet-ingenu...
- ensignavenger 1y agoSure... if you could actually find something to rent, as the article makes clear.
- kelnos 1y agoI doubt it. If we go by the guideline that your housing costs shouldn't exceed 30% of your salary (which I usually understood to be pre-tax), converting that to post-tax for a relatively low-income job is not going to bring that down to 10%. Sure, that's just a guideline, but it's presumably based on what is (or once was) reasonable and possible to expect.
- lazide 1y agonew york city has also had housing shortages since at least the 1860’s [https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/06/07/tenement-homes-new-york-history-cramped-apartments https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/06/07/tenement-homes-new-york...]
- _1tem 1y agoAverage salary in Ukraine is about 25,000 UAH, and average rent in some of the poorer regions was/is about 4000 UAH. So 16% of salary.
- margalabargala 1y agoThat's the average salary country wide. What's the average salary in "some of the poorer regions"? Also I'm not sure rental rates in a country currently actively being invaded and regularly bombed is a good example.
- _1tem 1y agoThe situation was actually comparable even before the full-scale invasion.
- margalabargala 1y agoFine, but you're still comparing apples to oranges by using the country-wide average salary against the average rent in the poorest regions.
- IshKebab 1y agoAverage salary will be lower in poorer regions though. 10% is a crazy goal.
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- sfmz 1y agoBy 1933 [Social Democrats in Vienna] had built almost 60,000 dwellings, mostly in huge apartment houses... These were built so efficiently that the average cost per apartment was only about $1,650 each; since rent was expected to cover only upkeep and not construction cost (which came from taxes), the average rent was less than $2.00 a month. Thus the poor of Vienna spend only a fraction of their income for rent, less than 3 percent, compared to 25 percent in Berlin and about 20 percent in Vienna before the war. From "Tragedy & Hope" by Carrol Quigley
- IshKebab 1y ago> rent was expected to cover only upkeep and not construction cost (which came from taxes) I think he meant non-subsidized rents.
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- snapplebobapple 1y agoAka actual rent because subsidy can make rent for some group targetted for special treatment whatever the subsidizer wants. Subsidized rent is a stupid metric. What matters is the broad situation for everybody
- Molitor5901 1y agoIf there wasn't anyone renting at the high prices, then they would sit empty, but someone must be renting them. Otherwise the price would have to come down or they stay empty.
- xnx 1y ago> when rent is less than 10% of take home pay If that were ever true, people would chose to spend a higher percentage to get a nicer, bigger, or better located place. Unlike many goods, there is practically no upper bound on what you can spend on housing. You can't buy a better phone for $3000, but you can continue to buy a better home up to $50 million (possibly more).
- actuallyalys 1y agoIt means the shortage is being relieved. From the article: > The construction boom, nonetheless, has improved rent affordability, according to Realtor.com data.
- jayd16 1y ago> Still, she added, rents are about 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and consumers remain concerned about their financial situation and job security in recent surveys. When people throw around the word shortage what they mean is "availability at a price I'm willing to pay." Same with labor shortages.
- moron4hire 1y agoThat's... the definition of shortage
- lazide 1y agoI think they meant ‘that i’m happy to pay’. which is different.
- tiahura 1y agoMuch of the narrative has been that the problem is because nimby boomers won’t allow apartment complexes in single family neighborhoods, there are simply not enough apartments.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoWe've been rewarding voices who want to lock the gate behind them. They want their area frozen at the moment they moved into their home. What we learned is that those voices are catastrophic for entire classes of people - like new families.
- happytoexplain 1y agoThis is oversimplified as an attack on the image of an enemy. Most people work hard as hell to call a place home, and understandably don't want their community "ruined", the definition of which they have variably (un)reasonable metrics for. That's the complicated truth. Yes, people also don't want things to change in general from the moment they called it home, but change isn't the same thing as "ruined".
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- mitthrowaway2 1y agoThe title is about asking rents, not average rents. In a perfectly liquid market these are the same, but shelter is far from liquid. Many renters have been renting for years and are paying less than today's asking prices; if they had to move, they'd still be facing a rent hike. This means that while the pressure on housing may be decreasing somewhat, shelter inflation is still a big thing (growing at a 3.6% annualized rate as of April, and outpacing broader inflation significantly).
- doctorpangloss 1y ago“Location, location, location”
- energy123 1y agoThere's a housing shortage in places like California where people aren't allowed to build. There's no housing shortage in places like Austin, Texas where people are allowed to build.
- esseph 1y agohttps://www.newsweek.com/austin-housing-market-trouble-2062510 https://www.newsweek.com/austin-housing-market-trouble-20625... "Just because home prices are coming down and there are more listings, doesn't mean that prices are affordable. So there's still a supply problem in cities like Austin," Turner said. "I think only 25 percent of Austinites can afford to purchase a home at the median home price."
- const_cast 1y agoThe trouble is that Austin will just become California once those people buy homes, because that's how housing works in the US. It's an investment, and not just any investment, but the primary investment for the middle class. We don't actually want housing prices to come down.
- mathattack 1y agoA couple ways: 1 - The median apartment this year may be different than the median apartment 3 years ago. Perhaps cheaper (or smaller) apartments and houses are coming up for rent. A more accurate measure would be comparing the prior rents to new rents for existing places. 2 - Median doesn't equal mean. The 50th percentile apartment may be cheaper, while the 25th (more applicable for housing affordability discussion) or 75th (more applicable to HN readers) may be higher. 3 - The median is still up 20% over pre-pandemic levels. 4 - To measure housing shortage we should check levels of homelessness based on economic reasons. (Much more complicated than median price)
- Molitor5901 1y agoMy opinion is there is not really a housing shortage, instead, there is a shortage of housing where people want to live. Take any populous city and you will find the cute, walk-able neighborhoods that everyone wants to live in. Because of that, they have higher rental prices. There is plenty of housing, but in a capitalist market of supply versus demand, the loudest group are going to be those who want to live in the expensive housing but can't afford it.
- iambateman 1y agoThis is a fantastic question, and sparked a lot of thought. The story shows 28/44 metro areas had decreasing rents last year, so 64%. That still means that the other 16 had rising rents. My guess is that rents lag inflation quite a bit, so the (slight) decrease is basically reflecting the drop in inflation over the past couple years. So, yes rents dropped 1% last year but they’re up 20% over 5 years. I do believe that the US has a significant shortage of housing that is high quality in city centers. Families don’t want to live in apartments in this country so they end up living 20+ miles from their work and spending a huge amount on transportation.
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- rwc 1y agoSource: https://www.redfin.com/news/rental-tracker-may-2025/ https://www.redfin.com/news/rental-tracker-may-2025/
- jt2190 1y agoThis is interesting: “I’m not seeing many first-time homebuyers right now,” said Nicole Stewart, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Boise, ID. “Rental rates here are still more manageable than saving up for a down payment and mortgage. People are finding rentals that are nicer than the house they could afford at the same monthly cost. That’s in part because a lot of home sellers are overpricing their properties as they struggle to adjust to the changing housing market.” > The typical U.S. homebuyer needs to earn over $50,000 more than the typical renter to afford monthly housing payments, and the gap has been widening due to high home prices and mortgages rates. I’ve heard that buying a house is being “long” on the local labor market. What this is suggesting is that labor markets (i.e. salaries) in general have not kept pace with inflation and higher interest rates.
- anonfordays 1y agoConsidering the precipitous fall in border crossings since Trump took office, I wonder how the fall in immigration is tied to the fall in rent. Illegal immigrants still have to live somewhere, they increase the demand for rental housing, boosting rent prices.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoAs ever, YMMV. Like most renters here, we're paying 2x what we were 5y ago. During that time, our region transitioned from the most affordable category to the least affordable. The article shows our rents are up 4 percent; nothing shows any indication of slowing. The folks most likely to be priced out of housing by escalating costs - they are the same folks who don't have the stack of cash needed to move to a different market.