Downward trend in Kansas City metro rent prices doesn’t mean the living is easy | Opinion
How can good news come with such bad news?
Nationwide, rent prices dropped in September. That’s the headline on the latest Rent.com and Realtor.com reports of metropolitan areas and states in the U.S. The Kansas City region saw a small decrease, too.
But just because rents went down a little bit, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to find an affordable place to live.
Renting seems more attractive than buying a house right now because of soaring mortgage interest rates. Thirty-year rates jumped again recently and are hovering around 8%. That’s bad news.
But KC metro rents are almost 10% higher than the same time last year, according to the latest monthly report from Rent.com That’s more bad news.
If you are trying to get an apartment or a house these days, you’ll feel the pinch.
I care about this because I’m a renter, having moved to the area this year. That’s a policy with me. I move somewhere new, and I rent for at least the first year. I do that for a lot of reasons, but primarily because I want to figure out where I want to live and then commit to a neighborhood.
I definitely noticed the higher prices here, compared to my former state of Oklahoma, as I looked for a rental this summer. In the Rent.com survey, Oklahoma rent prices plummeted: 9% from last year and nearly 20% from last month! Darn it! No worries, I’m here to stay.
Affordability has a direct effect on quality of life
OK, you might think, “I’m a homeowner, so this doesn’t affect me.” Nope. You should care, too, because these trends affect overall affordability in the Kansas City region, which can affect livability for everyone — especially our most vulnerable residents — and that has an impact on businesses and people who might want to relocate here.
Tara Raghuveer states it plainly: “The rent is too damn high.” Raghuveer is an organizer with KC Tenants, a citywide tenant union in Kansas City. “Regardless of ups and downs in trends, all of us are paying the highest rents we have ever had to pay.”
Rent.com found the KC metro area had the fourth highest increase year-over-year in the country, at 9.36%. Median rent in our metro is reported to be $1,671. Only Columbus, Ohio, with a staggering 14.23%; Providence, Rhode Island, with 13.94%; and Buffalo-Cheektowaga, New York, with 11.02% were higher.
St. Louis is seventh, with an 8% increase from a year ago.
Other metros in the top 10 included: Birmingham-Hoover, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida; Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, Connecticut; Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Arizona and New York-Newark-Jersey City, New York/New Jersey.
Rent.com also looked at year over year prices for individual states, and discovered “regional trends with the largest rent growth coming from the Midwest while prices declined across the South and West.” Kansas had an increase of 9%, while Missouri had an increase of 4%.
The website explained its methodology, highlighting “year-over-year rent trends and price fluctuations that renters may experience in various parts of the United States. We compare rent prices across bedroom types to determine which of the country’s most populated metros are becoming more affordable or more expensive for renters.”
KC Tenants offers resources for renters
KC Tenants has a resource list on its website, which lists hotlines and information on organizing a tenant union and rent strikes, along with template letters to landlords and neighbors.
Rent takes a big bite out of any monthly budget. For most working class people, rent is their biggest bill, Raghuveer said. “Where are people going to go?”
In the Realtor.com survey, which focused on studio to two-bedrooms, the median price was $1,298. Raghuveer questioned why anyone would think that is affordable.
“At what point are we going to put people before profits? And what point are we going to put people before the investors who treat our homes like line items in our budget?”
So, overall Kansas City metropolitan area rents went down last month. Does your wallet feel any fatter?
