More Renters Stayed Put Last Year
The COVID-19 pandemic kept more people in their apartments last year.
This may come as a surprise, given the data that show more Americans moving to lower-cost areas of the country. Yet in a recent report, RENTCafé said that 10% fewer renters applied for a new apartment last year, which broke a years-long trend of single-digit increases. These results were consistent with a RENTCafé survey in April of 2020, when 11% of renters said they were staying put.
The decrease in renter mobility showed up in local markets. The number of applications for apartments in 16 of the nation’s 30 largest metros went down compared to the previous years, which demonstrates how the pandemic curtailed moving plans.
To evaluate mobility, RENTCafé looked at renters moving out of a city, renters moving within a city and renters moving into a city. It found that renters did leave the nation’s largest cities. Eighteen of the 30 largest cities in the US saw more renters leave in 2020, compared to 2019. Also, half of the largest cities saw more renters move out than come in.
But some cities did see people move in. El Paso (30% moving into the city), Charlotte (22%), Denver (16%), San Jose, Calif. (16%), Columbus, Ohio (13%), Boston (13%), Ft. Worth (7%), Philadelphia (4%), Houston (4%) and Jacksonville, Fla. (3%) were the top cities people were moving in.
This data is consistent with what apartment owners, like William Spransy, CFO of North Carolina-based Eller Capital, tell GlobeSt.com about migration to the Southeast.
“We’re seeing actual population shifts,” William Spransy, CFO of North Carolina-based Eller Capital, told GlobeSt.com in an earlier interview. “I believe demand is still extremely strong in the Carolinas as the pandemic has only accelerated the trend of migration out of the more densely populated areas to lower cost and lower density regions of the Southeast.”
The cities people were moving to weren’t the only things that changed in 2020. During the year, Gen Z renter activity surpassed Gen X in 2020. They made Gen Z the second most active renter generation after Millennials. Generation Z claimed 23% of this year’s renter movement, up from 12% two years ago. Gen X now made up 20% of moving renters in 2018 but is now only 20% according to RENTCafé.
Also, after improving for two years, renters’ median income ground to a halt in 2020. In 2018, the median renter income increased 1.5% to $36,552. In 2019, it jumped 5.1% to $38,400. In 2020, those salaries stagnated at around $38,400.
Source: globest.com
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