The American rental portal Zumper has released a report showing how rental prices in major US cities are on the decline, particularly in pricey inner-city areas. While rental prices were shown to be decreasing month-on-month in expensive large cities such as Boston and San Francisco, smaller regional cities such as Sacramento and Providence saw increases in prices of around 5%. The so-called ‘Brooklyn effect’ is in evidence in several other areas across the states as Americans look to move out of crowded and expensive inner-city areas to more spacious and cheaper surroundings.
Although San Francisco ($3,280 per month) and New York ($2,890 per month) remain the most expensive places to rent a 1 bedroom apartment, the former has seen a record decline in year-on-year price of 11.8% for June. On a national level, the picture in July has been of prices for both one and two bedrooms apartments picking up as people begin to move again after seeing little change so far this year.
Zumper itself seems to be keeping up with the trend in the rental space for fully digitised end-to-end transactions and recently launched its ‘Instrent’ feature in New York and Chicago. Instarent lets Zumper users remotely tour certain apartments on the platform before being able to reserve them for a small fee and send a digital application to become the tenant.
