The 43 million renter households in the US spent $535 billion on rent in 2015. Aggregate numbers like these often make it difficult to truly assess a situation. For more clarity, I want to share some points that were made in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month. The article made two important points:

1. Rents are increasing faster than the last several years

“Apartment rents increased faster last year than at any time since 2007.”

2. Rent increases are accelerating

“Another report from Axiometrics Inc., a Dallas-based apartment research company, showed that rents increased 4.7% in the fourth quarter compared with the same quarter a year earlier, the strongest year-end performance since 2005”.

Here is a graph that illustrates the rate of increase over the last several years:

Source: The KCB Blog