By Joe Bousquin | National Apartment Association HQ
Since the end of the Great Recession, the hallmark of this apartment cycle has been luxury units, usually located within the urban core, with a slew of amenities.
Of course, those kinds of communities don’t come cheap, to develop or to lease. The $300K per-unit development cost this cycle has been justified by the ability to push rents that have gone through the roof as well. In many markets today, $2,500 a month just gets you in the door.
The result has been an attainable housing scourge like no other: 49.7 percent of American renters are now classified as “cost burdened” — meaning more than 30 percent of their income goes to rent. Nearly 300,000 renters were added to those ranks in 2018 alone.
