It’s not just homebuyers who are getting hammered by higher prices. Area renters are also feeling the bite of soaring housing costs.
Dallas-Fort Worth apartment rents surged 15.5% in September from a year ago, according to a report by Apartment List.
The increase in D-FW rents this month came at a faster rate than Texas’ 14.3% gain and the national average rent rise of 15.1%.
In September 2020, rents in North Texas were down about 2% year-over-year.
“Rents are still increasing in nearly all of the nation’s 100 largest cities,” Apartment List’s Olyvia Ruhlmann said in an email. “We’re still seeing significant price gains at a time when seasonality in the market normally causes a dip in rents.”
Apartment List estimates that median rents in the D-FW area are $1,140 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,367 for a two-bedroom.
The highest apartment rents this month were in the Plano area at $1,880 — up almost 24% from a year earlier. Fort Worth had the lowest median rents at $1,260.
“Throughout the past year, rent increases have been occurring not just in the city of Dallas but across the entire metro,” Apartment List analysts said in their latest report.
And it’s not just D-FW renters who are digging deeper to make their monthly payments. September apartment rents were up 24% year-over-year in Austin, 13.8% in San Antonio and 9.8% in Houston.
“While Dallas’ rents rose sharply over the past year, many cities nationwide also saw increases, including Phoenix (27%), New York (18.3%) and Nashville (+17.5%),” Apartment List found. “Renters will find more reasonable prices in Dallas than most similar cities.
“For example, San Francisco has a median two-bedroom rent of $2,815, which is more than twice the price in Dallas.”
After suffering declines early in the COVID-19 pandemic, North Texas’ apartment market has roared back this year with record rents and rising occupancies.
Net apartment leasing in the D-FW area totaled almost 15,500 units in the second quarter — about four times the apartment demand during the same quarter in 2020, according to RealPage.
