Report: Price of renting in Raleigh up nearly 24% from last year

RALEIGH – The price of renting a studio, one bedroom, or two bedroom apartment in Raleigh area rose nearly 24% in the prior 12 months, a new report found.

Despite reports in December and January showing little change in rising rental rates, the new report from Realtor.com found that nationally, the median rental rate was up 19.8% year-over-year and is now $1,789 per month.

The report analyzed rental rates in January 2022 across the 50 most populous metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) of the country, including Raleigh and Charlotte.

In the Raleigh metro, which includes Wake, Johnston, and Franklin Counties, the report found that the median monthly rental price across all properties analyzed was $1,545, up 23.6% from last year.

That’s a difference of $295 in a monthly budget. A Wake County Board of Commissioners report in December noted that one in four residents are experiencing being cost-burdened when it comes to housing, meaning that the household is spending 30% or greater of household income on housing-related costs.

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But among the property types analyzed, only studio apartments saw a lower year-over-year percentage increase, whereas rates for two-bedroom and one-bedroom properties surpassed the region’s overall change.

For a studio apartment, the most recent data shows a median price of $1,415 per month, up 22.1% year-over-year from $1,159.

But for a two-bedroom apartment, the median monthly rent is now $1,710, up 24.4% or up $335 monthly from a year ago, when the median rate was $1,375.

The increase for one-bedroom homes was even greater, as a percentage, with the median monthly rental rate of $1,130 a year ago compared to $1,425 in January 2022, a 26.1% increase or an increase of $285 monthly.

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Rents are up in Charlotte, too

The median price of renting in the Charlotte region have increased, as well, and are up 21.8% across all the properties analyzed in the Realtor.com report.

That puts the overall median rental rate in Charlotte at $1,619. Studio apartments have seen an increase of 24.2% year-over-year and the median rental rate is now $1,489. The median rental rate for one-bedroom is $1,500, up 20.5% from last year. And the median rate of a two-bedroom property is now $1,755 in the region, up 18.3% from a year ago.

“Rent growth across the country kept hitting record highs in the first month of the new year, growing by double digits for the eighth straight month,” the report reads. “In January 2022, the national median rent had reached $1,789, up 19.8% year-over-year, increasing over five times as fast as the 3.4% growth rate seen just before the pandemic hit in March 2020.”

The report noted that the rapidly increasing price of renting in the areas studied in the analysis has “raised the average year-over-year growth of the past twelve months to 11.9%, reaching the highest level in our data history.”