Survey: A break for Austin-area apartment renters at last

AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN (February 11, 2018) – Rents for new leases in Austin dropped 0.7 percent last year, said Greg Willett, chief economist for RealPage, a real estate technology and analytics firm based in Richardson. Among the 50 metro areas with the largest apartment counts, “Austin is the only big market to register price cuts,” Willett said.

Across the United States, average rents grew at a 2.6 percent rate last year, RealPage said, with the typical monthly rent now $1,330. Willett said that, although there’s a lot of leasing competition among Austin’s newly opened properties, rents continue to rise in the luxury segment, increasing 1.8 percent during 2017. In contrast, rents declined about 2 percent in the mid-tier to bottom-tier properties.

Read more here.