This surge in rent is coming at the same time that buying a ho | 🏛Realty channel New York💰

This surge in rent is coming at the same time that buying a house is getting less affordable, too. Home prices are at record highs and more people are returning to cities, which creates more competition and higher prices in the rental market.

In addition, the federal government ended its moratorium on evictions. This means the foreclosure rate is going up, so more people may be forced to sell their home and rent instead. It also means landlords have more power to kick out tenants and raise the rent on whoever moves in next.

However, the increase in rents does at least signal that the economy is recovering from COVID-19, as tenants come back to cities and support local businesses.

Growth was particularly high in metros such as Tampa, FL, which includes St. Petersburg, which has seen a whopping 33.3% increase in rental prices. Monthly rents were a median $1,800 in the Florida city.

“The rental market is as tough as the sales market,” says Alma Alexander, a Realtor who’s with Coldwell Banker in Tampa.

She says a growing economy and strong sports industry are attracting many people to the Tampa region. The pandemic also gave the area a boost as many folks in snowier areas who could work remotely headed for cheaper, sunnier parts of the country. But in cities across Florida, there’s simply not enough housing to meet the demand.

The other metro areas with the highest yearly growth in median rent were Miami, at 31.6%; Riverside, CA, at 26.5%; Phoenix, at 26.4%; and Las Vegas, at 25.9%.

The pandemic saw a particularly large exodus of renters from big tech hubs like Seattle and Austin, TX, since tech-related jobs are often well-suited for remote work. As of September, rents in those cities are largely back to normal, and in some cases even higher than they were at the beginning of March 2020.

In Seattle, for example, median rents dropped around $300 from March 2020 to January 2021, from $2,923 to $2,610. As of September, they’re back to almost the same price they were before, at $2,895 a month. In Austin, rents last month were around 20% higher than they were in March 2020, jumping from $1,367 to $1,647.

More people returning to these tech hubs is a good sign generally for big cities and the U.S. “In a sense, they were bellwether markets for when rental housing would see a return toward some degree of normal,” says Ratiu