by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Asking rents spiked 10%-25% in half the cities. Rents fell in only a few, incl. -25% in San Francisco from 2019 peak.
OK, so these are advertised rents (“asking rents”) for apartments listed for rent at various rental listing services, including Multiple Listing Service, and they’re not the actual rents of currently occupied apartments, and they’re not rents for single-family houses, which dance to a different red-hot drummer. And the Consumer Price Index (CPI) doesn’t look at asking rents; it uses surveys to ask homeowners and tenants about the status of rents. Asking rents discussed here are a measure of where landlords think the current market is. And they’re going wild in lots of places.