Petersburg rental rates soared this past year
PETERSBURG — A national apartment search engine ranked Petersburg the third most affordable place to live in Virginia for 2021. That low-cost living could be a thing of the past after a year of inflation that’s hit nearly every sector of the economy, especially rent prices. Petersburg’s rental rates soared faster than most localities around the state.
According to Rent.com’s July 2022 report, the average price for a one-bedroom apartment in the city is now $1,394, a rise of 57% since 2021. Two-bedroom costs in the city also rose 30% to an average cost of $1,650. That makes Petersburg the most expensive place to rent in the Tri-Cities. Similar units in Hopewell average $865 (one-bed), and $990 (two-bed). Units in Colonial Heights average $749 (one-bed) and $859 (two-bed), according to the report.
Petersburg's one-bedroom growth rate was the highest in the region. One-bed rents in Richmond neighborhoods like Carytown and Scotts Addition grew slightly slower at 53% each. The city's two-bedroom growth rate was third in the region behind North Chesterfield (36%) and Carytown (78%).
Increased rental prices put Petersburg closer to the high-cost markets in the area. Top one-bedroom market were Midlothian ($1,727), Chester ($1,604), Glen Allen ($1,601) and Henrico ($1,540). Top two-bedroom markets were Mechanicsville ($2,057), Midlothian ($2,044) and Glen Allen ($1,914).
Rent.com notes that low-income renters are facing additional hurdles in the midst of rising rental costs. Carl Gershenson of the Princeton Eviction Lab told NPR that the use of online evictions records over the past two decades is making it harder for renters to shake blemishes on their housing record, and therefore making it harder to find housing.
Petersburg is no stranger to evictions, having had the second-highest eviction rate of any mid-sized city in the country in 2016, according to the Princeton Eviction Lab. Pandemic evictions protections have also come to an and as of the beginning of July.
More:Virginia tenants facing increased evictions as end to COVID-related protections nears
“The pandemic years, were actually some of the only two years in recent history where renters at the bottom of the market had the kinds of protections that they need to enjoy the housing security that renters in the rest of the United States have taken for granted for decades," Gershenson told NPR.
More:Laws for tenants will change after June 30. What are some resources for rent relief and evictions?
Thankfully, the report said that rental prices stabilized in July, with month-over-month prices remaining largely unchanged.
Another force that drove the national rental market upward was the aspect of bidding wars from the home-buying market trickling into apartment prices. Record-high home prices meant that more white-collar workers were looking to forgo the cost of a home to rent instead. Some of those high-earning renters started making over-ask rental offers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Back in Petersburg, three-bedroom prices actually dropped 2% ($1,916) and studio prices were stable ($724), although both unit types make up a much smaller portion of the city’s rental market.
One-bedroom rates in Petersburg had actually decreased 5% coming into 2021, with an average cost of $827 per month.
That growth means that Petersburg’s one-bedroom and two-bedroom rental rates rose faster than the national average increases of 25.3% and 26.5%, respectively. Petersburg rents are still below the national average — one-bedroom units are about $1,701 nationally and two-beds average $2,048.
Virginia is among the most expensive states to rent in, though costs are still well below states at the top like New York, Massachusetts and California.
Rent.com said that its methodology used a weighted average of its multifamily rental inventory for each unit type to reduce the seasonality of rental price. It also looked at historical standard deviations for weighted prices to remove outlier markets and minimize potential volatility caused by low inventory.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Petersburg rents soared this past year, among highest increases in the region
