The cost of renting a home in the U.S. is surging and young workers have felt the sharpest pain, many of them taking on additional jobs or roommates to afford housing costs, Reuters reported. Household rents in 2021 jumped 10% from pre-pandemic levels, according to Census Bureau estimates released last week. The figures came as rising healthcare and rental costs pushed U.S. consumer prices up unexpectedly last month. The data from the bureau’s annual American Community Survey put median U.S. rent at $1,037 in 2021, up from $941 in 2019. Year-over-year increases in the median household rent over the past decade were typically 2% or 3% — one exception was the 5% rise from 2018 to 2019. Adding to renters' woes, rents in the professionally-managed sector — usually larger properties operated by management companies — have risen even more dramatically. Annual rent growth there hit 11.6% at the end of 2021 and start of 2022, about three times what it was in the five years prior to the pandemic, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. At the same time, vacancy rates fell to their lowest since 1984 as post-pandemic demand surged.
