Chicago rents defy national trend, climbing ever higher

Chicago rents aren’t all that damn high, but they’re rising at the nation’s third-fastest pace.

The median rent for a one-bedroom Windy City apartment jumped 6.3 percent in June from May to $1,870, an increase of almost a third over the past year, according to real estate website Zumper. Two-bedrooms will set you back $2,230, about the same percentage increase from May and 27 percent higher than a year ago.

That’s a contrast to the rest of the nation, where median one-bedroom rents rose just 0.5 percent in June, a substantially slower increase than prior months, and two-bedroom rents fell 2.9 percent. Chicago’s monthly increase was topped only by Norfolk, Virginia, and Fresno, California on the Zumper list.

One reason: The pandemic is ending, and with it so are the deals that Chicago landlords offered to lure tenants during the health crisis, leading to a larger jump in rents than previous years, according to Zumper.

Rents dropped in major cities where employees opted to leave and work remotely from larger suburban spaces, but eventually recovered. Those rents have increased as more and more people became priced out of the red-hot pandemic housing market, where

Relatively speaking, though, Chicago rents rank No. 13 in the nation. New York has the highest one-bedroom prices, at $3,600, followed by San Francisco at $3,000 and San Jose, California, at $2,750.

Home sales are expected to slow this fall as mortgage rates rise, concern rises that a recession is coming, and potential buyers opt to delay purchases. Prices are dropping as well, so some buyers are trying to buy homes now that there’s less competition.

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