Apartment rents jump 5.8 percent - OC Register

Jeff Collins Register Writer

Another round of rent increases occurred at Orange County's large apartment complexes last fall, reflecting an ever-tightening market as vacancies continued to fall.
The average asking rent for a large-complex unit in Orange County was $1,561 a month, according to apartment tracker RealFacts.
That's up $85 a month – 5.8 percent – from the same three months of 2010. It was the biggest increase the county has seen in 4½ years, RealFacts figures show. And it was the fourth-biggest percentage gain among 26 California metro areas tracked by RealFacts.
Apartment rent here has been rising steadily since a bout of cuts ended two years ago. The average rent increased from one quarter to the next in seven of the past eight quarters.
The fall quarter's average rent was up $6, or 0.4 percent, from the summer quarter.
Rising demand is the key reason rents are up.

The apartment vacancy rate in Orange County has been dropping for two years, falling to 4.9 percent this past fall. It was the first time in just over four years that the vacancy rate fell below 5 percent.
The six-year-old housing slump has pushed more homeowners back into the rental market, landlords said, while the slight growth in jobs over the past year prompted some residents who had been bunking with family or friends to move out on their own.
In addition, landlords say, more people choose to rent rather than buy after seeing so many people suffer disastrous losses in the housing market crash.
RealFacts numbers come from a survey of managers of 501 Orange County complexes with 90 or more units. The 128,350 apartments included in the survey represent a third of all rentals in the county.
By apartment size, the report shows:
The biggest percentage rise occurred in the two-bedroom, two-bathroom units. Those average rents jumped 7 percent to $1,801.
The smallest units had the second-biggest rent increases. Studio apartments jumped 6.7 percent to $1,127 a month.
Rents rose 6.5 percent to $2,176 a month for three-bedroom, two-bath apartments, the third-biggest jump.
Rents were up 5 percent to $1,337 a month for one-bedroom, one-bathroom units.
The most stable rents were for three-bedroom townhomes. Rents for those units rose 3.3 percent to $2,369 a month.

Article from: OCRegister.com
Published: Jan. 19, 2012 12:00 a.m.