Good news, landlords! People still think renting is cheaper than buying

People are increasingly viewing renting as more affordable than buying a home, a survey from Freddie Mac has found.

Rents in cities across the country as not rising as much as before, thanks to a major spike in construction over the past few years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Home prices, on the other hand, keep going up.

Freddie Mac’s survey, expected to be released tomorrow, found that around 76 percent of renters in August believe renting is a more affordable option than buying. That’s up from around 65 percent of renters in September 2016, according to the Journal.

“We talk virtually every day about how renting is becoming less and less affordable. I think the answer is just that housing is becoming less and less affordable and renting is the more affordable of the two,” David Brickman, executive vice president and head of Freddie Mac Multifamily, told the Journal.

Nearly a quarter of the renters surveyed said flexibility was the reason they chose to rent. In Manhattan last month, the median net effective rent slipped slightly to hit $3,334. Meanwhile, the median sales price of a Manhattan co-op just reached a 28-year high in the third quarter of the year to reach $850,000. The median sale price of a condominium in Manhattan increased 6.3 percent from last year to hit $1.7 million. [WSJ] — Miriam Hall