Rental markets for a one-bedroom apartment rose in states all across America in the last year, according to data from online listing marketplace Apartment List. The average rent estimate rose in all 47 reported states from Aug. 2021 to Aug. 2022, with 37 states seeing increases of at least 8% in that time. (Data is unavailable for Montana, West Virginia and Vermont.)
The nonpartisan data center USAFacts reports that for decades between 30% and 40% of U.S. households have been renting their homes. But nationwide rent surges disproportionately affect racial minorities, who rent at significantly higher rates than white Americans. According to U.S. Census data, less than 31% of white American households were renting their homes in 2019, compared to 59% of Black American households and 53% of Hispanic households. Black American households account for 20% of renter-occupied housing units despite making up just 8% of households overall.
[ READ MORE: Who are America's Renters? ]
Renters can expect to find the highest one-bedroom rents mostly in coastal states, with Hawaii's average figure of $1,787 leading all reporting states and New York coming in next-highest at $1,723. After Hawaii, 13 of the top 14 states are located on the coasts, with 9th-ranked Colorado the lone exception.
Raw HTML : State rents map 8.31.22
In the last year, New Jersey's rents surged the most in terms of absolute increase ($211) and Alaska's increased the most by percentage, with the one-bedroom estimates rising 16.2% year-over-year. New Jersey (15.6%), South Dakota (15.3%), Delaware (15.1%) and Wyoming (14.6%) rounded out the top five most pronounced percentage increases.
Most states have experienced even more pronounced increases since the start of the pandemic, including dramatic spikes in many Western states known for their natural beauty. From March 2020 through August, Idaho (44.4%), New Mexico (38.4%), Arizona (35.8%), Nevada (34.2%) and Utah (32.6%) all saw one-bedroom estimates increase by over 30%. Altogether, 45 of the 47 states saw rent prices increase by more than 10% over the 29-month period.
These states' one-bedroom rent estimates increased the most since the start of the pandemic, according to Apartment List:
Raw HTML : State rent change since pandemic map 8.31.22
At the onset of the pandemic, renters were protected by a federal moratorium on evictions, first as a provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and then imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In August 2021, the Supreme Court ruled the CDC's moratorium unconstitutional.
[ READ MORE: What happened after the federal eviction moratorium expired? ]
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