Fresno apartment rent prices fell slightly in November. Will this trend continue?
November was the second straight month in which the average monthly rent for apartments went down in the city of Fresno after 14 consecutive months of increases.
The overall average rent for market-rate apartments in Fresno last month was estimated at $1,377, according to data from ApartmentList.com. That’s a $10-per-month drop from October’s average, and is $23 lower than the all-time highs reported in September.
The price drop was seen across the entire spectrum of apartment sizes, from studios to four-bedroom units.
- Studios: $1,110 average in September, $1,099 in October, $1,091 in November.
- One-bedroom units: $1,085 in September, $1,075 in October, $1,067 in November.
- Two-bedrooms: $1,351 in September, $1,338 in October, $1,329 in November.
- Three-bedrooms: $1,809 in September, $1,786 in October, $1,773 in November.
- Four-bedrooms: $2,221 in September, $2,200 in October, $2,184 in November.
The data from ApartmentList.com, a San Francisco-based research company, represents an estimate of median contract rents for new leases signed each month. The median is a midway point at which half of new leases were for a higher monthly rent and half for a lower rent.
The estimates are only for market-rate apartments and do not include rent-subsidized units for low-income households.
“The pace of rent growth has been cooling rapidly for the past few months,” ApartmentList analysts wrote in their recent National Rent Report. “While our national index was essentially flat, 53 of the nation’s 100 largest cities saw rents fall this month, indicating a widespread rental market cooldown.”
Among California’s most populous cities, Fresno was joined by San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland in seeing the average monthly rental price decline between October and November. Rents increased, albeit slightly, in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Long Beach and Anaheim.
November rents in those cities were:
- San Francisco: $2,377 per month.
- San Jose: $2,315 per month.
- San Diego: 2,295 per month.
- Anaheim: $2,141 per month.
- Los Angeles: $1,945 per month.
- Oakland: $1,836 per month.
- Sacramento: $1,795 per month.
- Long Beach: $1,700 per month.
- Fresno: $1,387 per month.
The pace of change
The slight drop in average rent between October and November in Fresno represented a month-to-month decrease of less than 1% across all types of units. Since September, the average has dropped by 1.6% to 1.7%, depending on the type of unit.
Rents overall increased at a significant pace during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout much of 2020 and 2021. Even with the slight decreases in October and November, Fresno apartment rents today are an average of almost 19% higher than they were a year ago.
The ApartmentList analysts indicated that apartment vacancy nationwide wobbled during the pandemic.
“Much of this year’s boom in rent prices can be attributed to a tight market in which more households are competing for fewer vacant units,” they reported. “Our vacancy index spiked from 6.2 percent to 7.1 percent last April, as many Americans moved in with family or friends amid the uncertainty and economic disruption of the pandemic’s onset.”
The national vacancy rate dipped to as low as 3.8% in August, but has trickled upward over recent months to 4.2%, contributing to the meager drop in average rents.
“Although the recent increase (in vacancies) has been modest and gradual, it represents an important inflection point, signalling that tightness in the rental market is finally beginning to ease,” the analysts said. “If our vacancy rate continues to increase in the coming months, it’s likely that rent growth will also continue to cool.”
Fresno not only had the least expensive median rent among California’s largest cities in the analysis, it was also the lowest among 78 California communities included in the ApartmentList data.
Of 632 communities across the U.S. in the ApartmentList analysis, all but one of the 10 most expensive were in California. The Los Angeles seaside suburb of Marina Del Rey topped the list, with an average rent of more than $4,200 per month. Only four communities from outside California appeared among the 30 most expensive places.
Thirty-two communities, most in the Midwest and South, had average median rents that were less than $1,000 per month in November. The least expensive was Odessa, Texas, where the median rent across all apartment types was $640 last month.
