U.S. apartment rents fell in the fourth quarter from the third as the national vacancy rate climbed to a four-year high of 6.6 percent, according to a report just published by Reis Inc., a New York-based research firm.
The report defies the expectation that apartments would benefit from the housing slump as job losses and lower wages are cutting into the pool of potential renters in their twenties and thirties.
Asking rents fell 0.1 percent from the previous quarter, to $1,052 on average, their first quarter-to-quarter decline in almost six years. Effective rents, what tenants actually paid, fell to an average $996 last quarter, down 0.4 percent from the prior quarter.
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