Sustainability of Rent Momentum is Uncertain - Rent Trends via Multifamily Executive Magazine

In 2010 and 2011, rents went up 2.3 and 4.7 percent across the country, according to Carrollton, Texas-based rental data provider MPF Research. However, during that same time frame, wages only jumped two percent from the third quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s led a number of industry observers to ask an obvious question: how long can rent growth continue without an improvement in wages?

“At what point do individual renters feel they’ve hit the wall with they can afford,” says Greg Willett, who heads the research and analysis team at MPF Research. “It is really hard to calculate when that picks up. In the long term, over the remainder if the decade, I think that’s our key challenge.”

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