Apartment Demand Drops to 30-Year Low as Renters Lose Confidence in the Market

Apartment demand in the third quarter of 2022 dropped into the negative for the first time in 30 years as many renters have lost confidence in the market due to economic uncertainty, according to RealPage analytics.

Rental markets boomed at the start of 2022, but Q3 data shows a 1.0% increase in apartment vacancies despite a 0.2% month-over-month asking price decrease in September, RealPage reported. Weak rental numbers, despite the first month-over-month asking price drop since December 2020, point to a general economic uncertainty among renters who have adopted a “wait and see” mentality, the outlet reported.

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Wall Street Giant Swallows Up 12,000 More Apartments for $5.8 Billion

Blackstone Inc. bought out Preferred Apartment Communities and the 12,000 apartments it owned in the Southeast for $5.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Blackstone is one the world’s largest commercial property owners, and it purchased the Atlanta-based apartment owner with its largest fund, which raised more than $50 billion in the last five years, according to the WSJ.

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‘Squad’ Members Earned Tens of Thousands as Landlords, Even as They Supported Eviction Moratorium

Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib

Far-left Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who have both been vocal critics of landlords and supportive of the eviction moratorium that prevents them from collecting rent indefinitely, made tens of thousands of dollars themselves collecting rent last year, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Tlaib disclosed in a recent financial statement that she made between $15,000 and $50,000 from rent out of a property she owns in Detroit, even after she had recently criticized “landlords and bill collectors” and said that Americans needed to be protected from them “in the midst of a pandemic.” Pressley made roughly $15,000 from 2019 to 2020 off a property she owns in Boston. Pressley has denounced landlords for trying to collect rent during the pandemic, claiming it to be “literally a matter of life and death.”

Both congresswomen, along with others in the so-called “squad” and other congressional Democrats, were supportive of extending the eviction moratorium that has forbidden landlords across the nation from collecting rent, ostensibly to provide financial relief to Americans who cannot pay their rent due to losing their jobs to lockdown orders. The Biden Administration extended the eviction moratorium through October, after the original moratorium implemented last September by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was set to expire earlier this year.

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