Why are rents going up

But if you're currently renting your place, you might see the price tick up when it's time to renew your lease. In fact, rent is forecast to be even higher this year than it would have been if the pandemic had not occurred. Throughout , many renters were able to benefit from price reductions or even months of free rent as landlords struggled to fill empty units. But those concessions are more or less gone, and landlords are hiking up prices as Covid restrictions end and housing demand spikes.

Housing costs were rising before Covid, but the coronavirus exacerbated the problem: The national median rent has increased by Average rent growth this year is outpacing pre-pandemic levels in 98 of the nation's largest cities.

Rent is surging for a number of reasons, including more certainty in the job market and young people moving out on their own as pandemic restrictions end, says Nicole Bachaud, a market analyst at Zillow.

Rising rents pose a larger-than-usual risk to broad price growth. Shelter inflation is stickier than inflation in other categories, meaning it's less likely to immediately cool after leaping higher. The Federal Reserve , the White House, and most economists expect decade-high inflation to cool off as bottlenecks are addressed. Inflation for used cars, food, and utilities is expected to weaken as supply rebounds. Rent prices, however, complicate the consensus outlook. If shelter inflation continues to boom, forecasts for temporarily faster price growth could fall flat.

To be sure, rent prices are highly seasonal, and prices tend to be highest in the summer, according to Apartment List. If prices follow trends seen in and , prices would fall modestly through the fall and winter. Such declines could line up with a slowing of broader inflation. But with rents in major cities expected to keep climbing, shelter inflation is a top gauge to watch for hints at whether price growth fades as expected or stays past its welcome. For you. That all being said, you don't want to leave yourself in a situation where you may not be able to pay your rent or meet your other necessary expenses.

Skip Navigation. Key Points. As the period of discounted rents in cities comes to an end, many tenants are bracing for steep increases that could force them to leave their homes.

CNBC spoke to experts about rights renters are entitled to, as well as how they can negotiate with their landlord to get a better rate. VIDEO Pressure from rent and wages will be 'a more persistent inflation factor,' analyst says. Squawk Box Europe. But the good times were tainted by the feeling they were only temporary. Other cities seeing rent increases are those that aren't the major city in their region -- like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or San Diego, according to Zumper.

Nearby cities often offer a lower cost of living, larger square footage and an attractive lifestyle. The proximity is a realistic alternative for many people. New York and San Francisco rebound. Rents in the two most expensive markets in the country, New York and San Francisco, cratered during the pandemic.

Now both are coming back, with San Francisco lagging a bit behind. That's where we saw the biggest drops in rents [during the pandemic] and the biggest gains back up in the city. Prior to the pandemic, rents in San Francisco were more expensive than New York and there was less inventory. San Francisco may not be coming back as fast as New York, Wu said, because the Bay Area's tech industry might not require workers to be in the office to the extent the financial firms in Manhattan do.

Many homebuyers are dropping out of the market. Still, she said, New York and San Francisco have more in common than they do with other parts of the country. Rents are not as strong in New York as some analysts thought they'd be at the beginning of the summer due to the ongoing threat of Covid That's up 1.