I started out exploring the US Census data on rental vacancy rates in the top US metropolitan areas, to see what was going on in Portland. I ended up grabbing a few more metropolitan areas to see if there was some sort of story to be found. Sure enough, there were three distinct charts that explained the Great Recession experience, relative to rental housing. Note: the US Census data only goes back to 2005, in this case.
I haven't explored all 75 metropolitan areas, but I suspect most of the regions could be categorized in these three charts.
In the first chart, you can't readily distinguish any effect of the Great Recession of 2008 - 2009. It's quite remarkable that the recession had extremely limited effect on the rental vacancy rate. For the most part, rental vacancies steadily decreased from 2005, and are currently in great shape compared to 2005.
In the second chart, you can see that there was a modest bump in vacancy rates during the start of the recession. Overall, the vacancy rates are modest to begin with, but between 2005 and the most recent quarter (Q3-2014) the vacancy rate is relatively flat.
In the third chart, it's quite obvious that the vacancy rates were high to begin with, and there was a significant bump during the recession. But you can clearly see that the overall trend is downward, between 2005 and the most recent quarter. These markets had the wildest fluctuation, but is in much better shape than in was in, in 2005.
The lower the rate, the greater the pressure to build new apartments and economic growth. But then, the higher the rate, the better pricing power for renters.
It seems, that Seattle, San Francisco, Portland and Los Angeles all have a big need for apartment rentals, and thus, a lot of room for economic growth.
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