Rents in Longmont declined by 0.7% last month, reflecting a national trend that appears to show the rental market turning a corner.
Apartment List publishes monthly reports on rental trends, which showed a rent drop of 0.7% in Longmont and nationwide last month. That was the largest nationwide single month decline in the history of Apartment List’s index going back to 2017.
Rents were down in 89 of the U.S.’s 100 largest cities, and Senior Housing Economist Chris Salviati explained that this drop in prices over October reflects typical seasonality trends when the rental market would cool off in fall and winter months.
“I do think that what we’re starting to see right now is a little bit of a shift in market conditions, both locally and nationwide,” he said. “After a year and a half of skyrocketing rent growth, now I think we’re maybe starting to hit the limits of that and things are starting to level off.”
Since the start of the pandemic, rent has gone up in Longmont by 22.3%, according to Apartment List. Over the same time period, the national average rent went up by 22.4% and statewide by 21.2%.
Salviati said it wasn’t clear whether rents would start declining by a significant amount, expecting rents to tick back up again early next year. He added that could change depending on what happens with the broader economy.
“I’m not really seeing any signal that this is kind of a sharp turn in the opposite direction, but I do think that it is a leveling off and return to what we consider to be more normal market conditions,” he said.
Year-over-year rent growth in Longmont currently stands at 3.9%, according to Apartment List, compared to 19.2% at this time last year. This trails the national average increase of 5.7% over the past year, while Colorado is up by 4.1%.
According to the index, median rents in Longmont stand at $1,388 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,609 for a two-bedroom. Salviati noted that private listing sites like Apartment List tend to skew toward luxury apartments, introducing a sampling bias.
