Nationwide rent prices rose 3.8 percent year-over-year in December, continuing an upward trend that has been largely unaffected by the pandemic.
According to the latest Single-Family Rent Index report released by CoreLogic on Tuesday, rental prices across the country are up 0.9 percent compared to last year. While there was a dip in prices during the very early months of the pandemic, the cost of renting a home has continued to climb at unprecedented rates throughout both the coronavirus and subsequent unemployment crises rental prices are now growing faster than they were before the pandemic.
CoreLogic
“In the final months of 2020, single-family rents posted the highest increases in over four years,” Molly Boesel, principal economist at CoreLogic, said in a prepared statement. “However, single-family rent price reaction to the pandemic and resulting recession differed greatly across metros. While rents in the Southwest U.S. strengthened, in some areas of the country in
Mortgage delinquencies across the country are significantly higher than they were last year, fueled largely by the rise of payments late by more than 90 days amid the pandemic.
According to the latest data from property analytics provider CoreLogic, 6.1 percent of mortgages in the United States were in some state of delinquency in October. This number had jumped dramatically from October 2019, when only 3.7 percent of mortgages were delinquent, and it dipped just slightly from the 6.3 percent observed in September.
The economic effects of the pandemic and resulting widespread unemployment are just now starting to show on homeowners’ abilities to make their mortgage payments. While early-stage delinquencies are largely still protected by various government forbearance programs (down to 1.4 percent from 1.8 percent last year), the missed payments tend to add up and catch up with homeowners later serious delinquencies (payments late by more than 90 days) are up 4.1 percent from 1.
With the exception of some notable cities, rent prices are growing even faster than they had been prior to the pandemic and point to a looming affordability crisis for tenants.
Rent for a single-family home in the United States grew by 3.1 percent in October. In the same month last year, that number was at 2.9 percent, according to the latest data from CoreLogic.
This is the first time since the coronavirus first hit the United States in the spring that rent price growth is higher than it was last year. With bustling job markets and high numbers of relocating professionals, cities like Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, and Charlotte, North Carolina, have had such high rent growth that it slanted the mean in the rest of the country 8.9 percent, 7.6 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.