Average Apartment Rents Decrease by 4% Nationwide

PRLog (Press Release) - Feb 25, 2010 -
Over the last 6 months, the average rent for an apartment has decreased by $40 to an average of $961 per month, a decrease of ~4%.

Wichita, Indianapolis, Miami all saw rent increases above 2%. The majority of cities, however, are still flat or decreasing. Oklahoma City, New York, Albuquerque, Portland, Louisville, Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, and Nashville all posted declines from 7% to 9%, according to Rentjungle.com (http://www.rentjungle.com), an apartment search and market research website.

“Despite these decreases, we are seeing some encouraging signs in the rental market,” says Rentjungle.com CEO Jon Pastor. “Looking at just January this year, rent nationwide is up 1% over December, which is a reversal in the overall 6 month trend.”

Rentjungle.com calculates these figures by analyzing over 1 million apartment ads a month. The goal of the site is to help users make more informed decisions.  A table of price changes by city is available at http://www.rentjungle.com/rentdata/

“Difficulties in the real estate market didn’t push as many people into apartments as the industry would have expected,” says Rentjungle.com founder Rick Ferris. “Increases in families renting instead of buying were offset by existing renters taking on roommates or moving back with parents.”

ABOUT RENTJUNGLE

Rentjungle.com (http://www.rentjungle.com), is the most comprehensive rental listing site on the web. It works much like other search engines in that it scours the Internet to amass apartment listings from a variety of sites.  Rentjungle.com employs innovative spidering technology that can detect both when new rentals come on the market and when rents for a particular property change. All of this data is analyzed and stored in order to keep users abreast of the latest happenings in the rental market. Trends can be tracked by city and by neighborhood, furthering the site’s value to users. Users can see searches on an easy, interactive map that links to satellite street views.