Chicago Ranks #9 In The U.S. For Rising Rents
By Mae Rice in News on Apr 11, 2016 3:38PM
Logan Square landlord M. Fishman has been hiking tenants' rents as much as $600 a month when their leases expire, prompting protests, legal action and, as one tenant reported, some crying. M. Fishman is on trend, too, according to recent analysis from online apartment marketplace Abodo. Based on data from their site, average rent rose across Chicago from March to April. In fact, of all the cities in the country, Chicago had the ninth largest March-to-April rent increase.
Abodo measures citywide rent changes based on the change in average rent for a one-bedroom apartment. This puts Chicago's rent increase from March to April at 8 percent (which, though nothing to scoff at, is also nothing compared to top-ranked San Jose's 28 percent rent increase). Currently, Abodo says the average rent for a Chicago one-bedroom is $1,754 a month, and a spokesperson for Abodo told Chicagoist that was based on just over 10,000 property listings—so this doesn't seem like a case of a tiny sample size. Nor does it seem like they only list apartments in fancy Loop neighborhoods; though Abodo's rental listings are especially densely clustered along the lakefront, they have rentals listed as far north as Evanston (and Wilmette!) and further south than the city limits—including Hammond, Illinois.
To be clear, though, the rent increase Abodo measured doesn't reflect hundreds of M. Fishmans at work. The company isn't measuring rent hikes for individual units, but rather the average rent of Chicago one-bedrooms listed in a given month. So perhaps this just means fancier Chicago apartments were available for rent in April than in March? Fingers crossed that's what it means. Worst comes to worst, though, we can always mass-migrate to Las Vegas, where rents fell 11 percent from March to April—though we'll probably spend whatever rent money we save on blackjack and desert-strength antiperspirant.
Last but not least, here's Abodo's nationwide rent-change infographic:
