Austin's Soaring Rent

Where is rent increasing the most in the nation? Austin's near the top

Austin's rent for one-bedroom apartments has increased by 25-percent in the past eight months.

Photo courtesy of TexasApartmentRentals.com

It is a truth universally acknowledged that rent in Austin is going up. What's a little harder to understand is how much.

In order to put the rental market into context, the folks over at Abodo narrowed in on the pricing for one-bedroom apartments. According to their most recent National Rent Report, Austin experienced the second highest rent increase in the United States for 2015.

To understand the trend, Abodo analyzed data on listings between April and December of this year. The average price for a one-bedroom unit was $908 back in April, but jumped up to $1,135 by December — a 25-percent increase.

Although the news is grim, these pricing increases are on par with the rest of the country. "Strong rental demand has helped to keep occupancies near record highs. Although that has been a boon to property owners and developers, it is less welcome news for renters who have watched rents climb ever higher," says Abodo of the national phenomenon.

Combine the demands of both an urban hub and a college town, and you have a recipe for high rent in Austin. In an age where parking and transportation are a struggle, Abodo asserts that the apartment search has become especially difficult for college students living in metro areas because they are being priced out of desirable properties near campus.

When it comes to these one-unit rent increases, Austin is beat out only by Las Vegas. Rounding out the other top five for highest rental increases are Denver, San Diego, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. On the other end of the spectrum, the cities that experienced the biggest decrease in rent are Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Boston, San Francisco, and Fresno, California.

To read more about this year's rental trends, head on over to Abodo.

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No Cap

Austin was a top destination for Gen Zers on the move for 2023

Photo by Neel Pramanik on Unsplash

Who wouldn't want to live in a Gen Z hotspot like Austin?

As Gen Z enters adulthood, many are flocking to the nation's biggest cultural hubs like New York City, Los Angeles, and now Austin, which had the one of the top 20 highest inflows of Gen Zers in 2023.

Austin's reputation as a Gen Z hot spot was unveiled in a recent report by American home improvement brand This Old House, which analyzed migration trends across multiple generations using 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Austin saw an influx of 10,363 Gen Z residents last year to become the generation's No. 20 most popular city.

The city first gained traction as an up-and-coming destination for Gen Zers last year, when the "experience-hungry generation" was on the hunt for an affordable place to live with vast opportunities for entertainment, education, or employment.

Real estate marketplace Zillow seems to agree with this trend on a statewide scale; in February it declared Texas the No. 1 destination for Gen Zers on the move in 2024.

However, as Gen Z Austinites may have learned, it might take a big bite out of their paychecks to live in such a highly sought-after city. A March RentCafe housing cost analysis predicted Gen Z adults living in Austin are likely to spend more than $160,000 on rent by the time they are 30 years old.

While Austin saw big gains in its Gen Z population last year, many other big cities saw a mass exodus. Plano, for example — which gained 1,295 Gen Z residents in 2022 — lost 4,028 Gen Zers in 2023, the report discovered.

"The biggest Gen-Z exodus was in El Paso, with a drop of 5,607 — a sharp turn from 2022 when the city saw an increase," the report said. "Other cities, including Plano, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; McKinney, Texas; and Wichita, Kansas, are seeing similar declines."

The report also revealed that Austin is also one of the top destinations for millennials and Gen X, whereas both New York City and Los Angeles lost more residents among those two generations in comparison.

Austin had a net gain of 2,478 millennials in 2023, but saw net losses in its Gen X (3,240), baby boomer (1,178), and silent generation (1,390) populations.

"Gen X, baby boomers, and the Silent Generation are also moving away from major cities, particularly New York City and Washington, D.C.," the report said. "They’re heading to some of the same cities as Gen Z, including Houston and Jacksonville, Florida."

The top 10 cities that gained the most Gen Z residents in 2023 are:

No. 1 – New York City, New York
No. 2 – Los Angeles, California
No. 3 – Houston, Texas
No. 4 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No. 5 – Chicago, Illinois
No. 6 – San Diego, California
No. 7 – Seattle, Washington
No. 8 – Charlotte, North Carolina
No. 9 – Dallas, Texas
No. 10 – Minneapolis, Minnesota

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