Race for Space Pushing Up Suburban Rents

The Wall Street Journal (reposted in Realtor.com) says big companies that own single-family homes are raising rent at the fastest rate since they emerged from the foreclosure crisis, capitalizing on high demand for suburban housing. Interestingly, the WSJ says that while mom & pop landlords and individual investors own most of the country’s 16 million rental houses are also raising rents, they’re not raising them as aggressively as the mega landlords – which reportedly increased 7.5% on average in October.

“The demand we see today is totally insatiable, and it’s growing,” said David Singelyn, chief executive of American Homes 4 Rent, which owns more than 53,000 houses in 22 states and collects an average monthly rent of $ 1,686.
“Landlords are able to raise rents right now at a rate that is high in normal times,” said Rick Palacios Jr., John Burns’s head of research. “It’s ridiculously high when you put it in a backdrop of a recession”