Harvard Study Finds: The Rent Is Too Damn High

[Purveyor]

If you can’t afford to own, you can rent. But what if you can’t afford to rent, either? Millions of Americans are in precisely that situation, according to a study released today by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The availability of apartments, especially cheaper ones, hasn’t nearly kept up with demand, and the problem has worsened since the 2007-09 recession, the study says.

“In 1960, about one in four renters paid more than 30 percent of income for housing. Today, one in two are cost burdened,” according to the study, America’s Rental Housing.

“Cost-burdened” means you’re paying more than 30 percent of income for housing and “severely cost-burdened” means you’re paying more than half. “By 2011, 28 percent of renters paid more than half their incomes for housing, bringing the number with severe cost burdens up by 2.5 million in just four years, to 11.3 million,” according to the Harvard study, which was conducted with partial funding from the MacArthur Foundation.

The boom in housing prices made ownership unaffordable for many families, and the subsequent bust forced others into foreclosure. You would think that all of those foreclosed homes would make great rental properties, and they have. “Remarkably,” though, the study says, “soaring demand was more than enough to absorb the 2.7 million single-family homes that flooded into the rental market after 2007.”

The result of the spike in rental demand is a seller’s market: “From a record high of 10.6 percent in 2009, the vacancy rate turned down in 2010 and has continued to slide, averaging 8.4 percent in the first three quarters of 2013.”

more...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-09/harvard-study-finds-the-rent-is-too-damn-high#r=hp-ls

[4Q2u2]

1. Pretty Ironic

Since Harvard is one of the major contributors to sky high rents in Boston.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/6/6/cleaning-up-the-mess-at-a/

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/11/06/story1.html?page=all
http://blog.coeverywhere.com/boston/the-students-are-coming-but-where-are-they-going/

[Jesus Malverde]

2. Love that meme

[Baitball Blogger]

4. I live in a community where they intentionally changed land zonings from multi-family to

upscale single family homes. I don't find any of this even remotely amusing. I get him.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. Rent prices are something that can be used to support segregation.

Increase the rents in a location and you'll be sure to price it too high for working class people, which of course, heavily includes minorities.

[Chuckmonico]

5. We need a study to know this?

I knew.

[mstinamotorcity2]

9. It takes think tanks and

research studies about 2 years to catch up what we already know and see on a daily basis. welcome to DU

[HereSince1628]

6. In my arctic summers in Russia in the late 90's we would talk about home economics...

under the light of the midnight sun and the influence of peppered vodka.

Russians found American salaries ridiculous, thought us all overpaid, and weren't afraid to say so...

What I found ridiculous from an American perspective was an expectation that a person wouldn't spend more than FIVE percent of their income on housing, and would pay less for medical care.

They flat out didn't believe that an American professor could spend
40% of take home salary on housing
30% on food
and 25% on transportation (including interest on a car loan, fuel, repair/maintenance and insurance).

While they respected my LLBean down Arctic Expeditionary Parka, they rolled on the floor laughing at my worn out Farm & Fleet coveralls.

[Marrah_G]

7. I pay half my income to rent.

And my apartment is not expensive for this area.

[fizzgig]

8. we're damn near priced out of our city

college town, about 150k people and average rent is close to $1100 a month and that money is likely to only get you a one bedroom. my city prides itself on coming out of the recession earlier and the number of jobs added, but most of those jobs are low-wage service jobs. housing assistance has a two-year wait and i don't know how people live here any more. we were lucky and found a place for just under $800 plus electric, so we don't plan on moving any time soon.

to add to the rent burden, the city has an ordinance that no more than three unrelated people can occupy a residence, so we couldn't couldn't share a place with another couple even if we wanted to.

[FarCenter]

10. The root cause is zoning and regulations preventing the building of more rentals.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. IOW, State and local governments rolling over for real estate developers for generations.

[FarCenter]

12. Plus environmentalists opposed to development

Speculators who want to sit on farmland taxed at special rates.

And suburbanites who want to preserve the socioeconomic exclusivity of their communities.

[Xithras]

13. The root cause is "too many people".

But then again, that's the root cause of most of our worlds problems.

[Scout]

14. lot rent in the trailer park where i live is $562/month...

that includes the lot itself that your home sits on, and they plow the snow, pick up the trash, provide those groups of mail boxes.

if your home is yours, you've got a mortgage payment on top of the lot rent, and we also pay our own electric, gas, water and sewer. oh, a small portion of lot rent from each home each month goes to school tax. the owner of the park pays the property tax on the whole thing.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. I know an apartment complex here in Vegas that went condo....

I saw their brochure. Their DREAM was to have absentee tenants. Rich corporations wanting to buy a local place for their executives to party. Too bad that nobody wanted to pay a quarter million for a 30+ year old apartment just because it has a stacking washer/dryer in a closet.

They lost a fortune.

[DesertDiamond]

16. I'm in a chronically economically depressed city and the rents are STILL high! You can't...

rent a house for less than $1200 and apartments are less but want you to prove your income is at least 3x the rent, which mine isn't. So I have been renting one of those $1200 houses - it's tiny and it's hard to get and keep roommates. My current roommate is moving out and I'm moving 20 miles further out where the rent is only slightly cheaper.