Check out these soaring rents!
So who is greedier right now, home sellers or landlords?
Well if you picked landlords, you hit the jackpot, though I am sorry to say I have run out of prizes this morning. Try back tomorrow.
Seriously though, asking prices in the Boston area rose 4 percent in December compared to the same month a year before. In fact, it is quite a turnaround from Dec. 2011, when asking prices actually fell 3.7 percent, according to Trulia's latest report.
Yet asking rents have risen even faster, posting a 6.4 percent, year-over-year increase in December.
So what is the average or median rent right now? Trulia did not offer up any numbers, saying the samples were too small to list for individual markets.
Anyway, feeling unsatisfied, I turned to Pittsburgh-based Rent Jungle for help and found this nifty list covering Boston and the inner suburbs. It's basically everything within ten miles of the city, so that includes such rental hotspots like Cambridge and Somerville.
One bedroom-rents hit bottom in September 2009, with a median rent of just under $1,500. Since then, rents have escalated to nearly $2,000 a month ($1,949) as of August, according to a chart put together by Rent Jungle.
The same pattern can be seen with two bedroom rents in Boston and environs, hitting bottom at $1,985 in November, 2009 before embarking on a steady, three year rise, with the median now approaching $2,500.
Are you out and about looking at apartments? What are you finding out there? Is it cheaper now to buy than rent?
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