Asheville rent increased 1% over the past month

Rent report from Apartment List:

Apartment List is releasing a new rent estimate methodology and index to track transacted rents throughout the country. These rent statistics represent our latest effort to design methods that address the most common issues that arise in rent growth estimation. In particular, this update reflects a concerted effort to capture transactedrents, as opposed to list rents, and we’ve found the difference to be meaningful during the pandemic.

Our new numbers continue to paint the picture of a protracted national slowdown and uneven recovery: the national rent index is down 1.4% year-over-year, but there is tremendous regional variation beneath the surface. San Francisco and New York City continue to lead the nation in pandemic rent drops, while smaller markets like Boise and Colorado Springs are heating up.

Here are some of this month’s highlights:

• Rents in Asheville increased by 1.0% month-over-month, and are up by 0.6% since the start of the pandemic in March.
• Year-over-year rent growth in Asheville currently stands at -0.7% compared to 2.0% at this time last year.
• New rent index for Asheville up 0.6% since start of pandemic

Asheville rents increase sharply over the past month

Asheville rents have increased 1.0% over the past month, but have decreased moderately by 0.7% in comparison to the same time last year. Currently, median rents in Asheville stand at $1,013 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,343 for a two-bedroom. This is the second straight month that the city has seen rent increases after a decline in July. Asheville’s year-over-year rent growth lags the state average of -0.2%, but exceeds the national average of -1.4%.

Rents rising across cities in North Carolina

While rent decreases have been occurring in the city of Asheville over the past year, cities in the rest of the state are seeing the opposite trend. Rents have risen in 6 of the largest 10 cities in North Carolina for which we have data. The state as a whole logged rent growth of -0.2% over the past year. Here’s a look at how rents compare across some of the largest cities in the state.

• Looking throughout the state, Cary is the most expensive of all North Carolina’s major cities, with a median two-bedroom rent of $1,341; of the 10 largest North Carolina cities that we have data for, 4 have seen rents fall year-over-year, with Charlotte experiencing the fastest decline (-2.9%).
• Greensboro, Fayetteville, and High Point have all experienced year-over-year growth above the state average (5.8%, 5.6%, and 3.8%, respectively).

Many large cities nationwide show more affordable rents compared to Asheville

As rents have fallen moderately in Asheville, large cities nationwide have seen prices increase, in some cases substantially. Compared to most large cities across the country, Asheville is less affordable for renters.

• Asheville’s median two-bedroom rent of $1,343 is above the national average of $1,106. Nationwide, rents have fallen by 1.4% over the past year compared to the 0.7% decline in Asheville.
• While rents in Asheville fell moderately over the past year, many cities nationwide saw increases, including Phoenix (+3.4%) and Detroit (+1.6%).
• Renters will generally find more expensive prices in Asheville than most large cities. For example, Detroit has a median 2BR rent of $889, where Asheville is more than one-and-a-half times that price.

For more information check out our national report. You can also access our full data for cities and counties across the U.S. at this link.

Methodology – Recent Updates:

Data from private listing sites, including our own, tends to skew toward luxury apartments, which introduces sample bias when estimates are calculated directly from these listings. To address these limitations, we’ve recently made major updates to our methodology, which we believe have greatly improved the accuracy and reliability of our estimates.

Read more about our new methodology below, or see a more detailed post here.

Apartment List is committed to making our rent estimates the best and most accurate available. To do this, we start with reliable median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then extrapolate them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from our listing data. In doing so, we use a same-unit analysis similar to Case-Shiller’s approach, comparing only units that are available across both time periods to provide an accurate picture of rent growth in cities across the country.

Our approach corrects for the sample bias inherent in other private sources, producing results that are much closer to statistics published by the Census Bureau and HUD. Our methodology also allows us to construct a picture of rent growth over an extended period of time, with estimates that are updated each month.

Read more about our methodology here.