Bryan Tucker began looking for a starter home in the Washington, D.C., suburbs earlier this year. He soon decided it wasn’t worth it.
In Arlington, Va., where he was looking, he found that most options he was interested in were priced over $1 million and way out of his budget. So he decided to renew his apartment lease another year.
“I have looked,” said Tucker, a 27-year-old project manager in the tech industry. “The only options that are really affordable for me for the next year are condos.”
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Would-be buyers like Tucker are staying in the rental market longer as the housing market remains out of reach for many. Apartment owners have noted on recent earnings calls that the share of renters moving out to buy homes is at record lows.
“The monthly cost of owning a home today is 61% more than leasing an apartment,” Richard Campo, CEO Camden Property Trust (CPT), a Houston-based owner of 58,000 apartment homes, said on the company’s first quarter earnings call in early May. “This is not going to change anytime soon.”
Mortgage rates are currently hovering around 7%, continuing to make borrowing expensive for potential buyers. Higher rates have also convinced many current homeowners to delay moving since they financed their homes at lower rates. That’s kept a lid on supply and helped drive home prices sky high.
Home prices hit fresh records in March, according to the latest data available from Case-Shiller. Economists at Bank of America expect home prices to grow 4% this year.
Camden said that just 9.4% of move-outs in the first quarter were due to its residents buying a home — the lowest in history.
Similarly, AvalonBay Communities (AVB), a REIT that owns nearly 80,000 apartment units, reported in its first quarter report that the share of people moving out to buy a home hit a record low, namely because of high costs of homeownership.
“Demand for [rentals] also continues to benefit from the differential in the cost of owning a home versus renting,” Ben Schall, CEO and president at AvalonBay, said in late April to investors and analysts.
“This is true across most of the country but particularly pronounced in our markets, given the level of home prices, resulting in it being more than $2,000 per month more expensive to own versus rent a home,” he added.
A recent report from Redfin suggests renters are more likely to stay put for the long run than they were a decade ago. According to the company’s analysis of renter tenure data from the Census Bureau, almost 17% of renters stayed in their home for a decade or more in 2022, up from 14% 10 years ago. The trend was similar for those who lived in their homes for five to nine years — the percentage of renters doing so rose to 16% from 14%.
“The rate environment is not looking good. That’s something that might keep the trend sticky, because mortgage rates are high and it’s not looking like they’re changing anytime soon,” Sheharyar Bokhari, Redfin senior economist, told Yahoo Finance in an interview.
At its June policy meeting, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate — which affects the direction of mortgage rates — steady and projected just one rate cut this year, down from a previous forecast of three.
To be sure, renting an apartment has become less affordable too. The median asking rent has increased 23% over the past five years, according to Redfin data.
That has buyers like Tucker weighing their options. He found that he could reasonably afford a $1,600 to $2,000 mortgage payment, assuming he put 20% down — not too far off from what he spends in monthly payments for rent.
“I’m fine with [renting] for now, but for the long term, eventually I would like to get a house,” Tucker said. “If that involves moving elsewhere, then I’m prepared to do that.”
Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv.