Rents continue to climb in August

Various rent reports this month delivered the unsurprising news that, for the most part, Austin rents are on their way back up. One such site, Apartments(.com), reports that the city’s rents overall are up more than 3.5 percent compared to this time last year. It attributes that to a decrease in vacancies, despite the flurry of new apartment construction activity—one of the highest in the country—over the decade or two.

How do those numbers compare to those of other rental-data sources? While each differs and has its own sets of limitations, they can give us a sense of what’s happening across the city.

Abodo

Abodo, which bases its numbers on analysis of its listings, puts Austin’s one-bedroom rent average at $1,151 and two-bedrooms at $1,449 for August. That’s a month-over-month decreases, at -0.2 percent, for the former, and an increase of 0.27 percent for the latter.

Apartment List

Listing site Apartment List (AL)’s numbers track by city limits, and unlike a lot of listing site data, its numbers are weighted with census data to compensate skewing toward luxury listings. It still attempts to track what a new renter or apartment-hunter could expect to pay for their pad, though, as opposed to what the typical renter is currently paying.

AL’s August data shows Austin rents increasing 0.7 percent over the past month and 0.6 percent in comparison to the same time last year. It pegs current median rents in Austin at $1,140 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,410 for a two-bedroom—showing the sixth straight month that the city has seen rent increases after a decline in January. Austin’s year-over-year rent growth lags the state average of 1.9 percent, as well as the national average of 1.2 percent, according to the site’s research.

Zumper

Zumper, which can skew toward luxury listings and uses its listings only when calculating its stats, creates a national rent index for 100 cities every month. For August, it reported that Austin has the most expensive rents in in the metro area (not surprising) and found that one-bedroom units remained flat month-over-month, at a median of $1,190, while two-bedroom units grew 0.7 percent, to $1,480, since July. Year over year, however, Austin one-bedroom rents saw a 10.2 percent gain over the same time last year and a 7.2 percent rise in two-bedrooms for the same period.

In a separate rental report, Zumper found the national one-bedroom median decreased 0.1%, to $1,208, in August, while two-bedrooms grew 0.3 percent, to $1,446. That made Austin the 32nd most expensive rental market in the country in August, according to the study.