Single-Family Rental Growth Continues to Moderate

There is growth but at a slow pace not seen in a couple of years.

When single-family rent growth is slowing even in Orlando, the country’s operators can see a reversal of their good fortune from the past few years.

CoreLogic’s Single-Family Rent Index, which analyzes single-family rent price changes nationally and across major metropolitan areas, showed the slowest month-over-month growth in the land of Disney at 8.9% in January, but that increase has slowed significantly since the peak 25% annual growth recorded in April 2022.

It marked the ninth consecutive month of declining rent growth; Orlando still performed well enough to be the country’s top US market for the third month in a row.

Nationally, single-family rent price growth increased by 5.7% year over year in January 2023, the lowest rate of appreciation since the spring of 2021.

No Markets Saw Double-Digit Growth

Further south, Miami dropped out of the top three highest-growth markets for the first time since the summer of 2021. None of the 20 metro areas that CoreLogic tracks posted double-digit year-over-year rent gains, the first time that trend has been observed since late 2020. Wow.

Molly Boesel, principal economist at CoreLogic, said in prepared remarks that while rent growth is slowing at all tracked price tiers, “declines for the lowest-cost rentals are not as significant, which raises affordability concerns. Annual rent growth for lower-tier properties was about three times the pre-pandemic rate, while gains in the highest tier were nearly one-and-a-half times during the same period.”

Attached single-family rental prices outperformed detached rentals, rising 6.2% year over year in January compared to 4.7%.