We talk about the impact of rising home prices all the time, but that’s only half the affordable housing story. Across the country, rents in suburban areas also show dramatic increases over the last year, with no signs of stopping.
A recent study from RentCafe shows that while urban Dallas continued to post fairly consistent rent increases in 2016 (5.9 percent), the farther you travel away from the city, the greater the hikes renters experienced. In Dallas proper, rental housing remains relatively affordable when compared to the rest of the Metroplex (and the country, as a whole). We have all that apartment construction to thank for that. More than 6,000 new apartment units became available in 2016, alone.
But in Fort Worth, where apartment inventory has stagnated, rents grew 6.3 percent over 12 months. And that’s nothing compared to areas like Weatherford and Midlothian where rent skyrocketed over 10 percent in 2016.
Cheaper the Rent, Higher the Spike
In fact, the “cheaper” an area had been previously, the more disproportionately the rent spiked. For instance, Greenville, which has an average rent of $685 (compared to $1,100 in Dallas), saw rent growth to the tune of 9.1 percent over 12 months.
The only in which rent has gone down over the last year? Little Elm and Prosper. Prosper’s negative growth rate was close to 10 percent, making its rents the slowest growing in the area.
While the study maintains that DFW is a more well-balanced study in rent increase, its truly suburban areas reflect the worrying national trend.
