Rent Smarter. Save Big.

There are a number of reasons why rent trends in the principal city do not mirror those of nearby suburbs. The pandemic’s effects on everyday life have certainly been more pronounced in cities than suburbs. Shelter-in-place requirements and business restrictions have ground to a halt many of the events and amenities that attract people to cities in the first place: live entertainment, bars and restaurants, public festivals, and the like. Many renters today are questioning whether it still makes sense to pay a premium for city living.

As a result, migration plays a big factor in the urban and suburban rent divide. While rents cool, the for-sale housing market remains hot, and the people who leave the rental market to become homeowners are often creating vacancies in dense, renter-friendly cities. Temporary moves have also been common this summer and are mostly affecting large cities where younger, more-mobile residents tend to cluster. Furthermore, whereas principal cities typically enjoy an annual influx of new residents each summer (especially college graduates and people pursuing career change), a shift towards remote work has stifled this inbound migration.

There are also differences in the types of apartments available in each type of city; dense urban centers are more likely to contain newer, more-expensive, more-luxurious apartments that are positioned to see more vacancies and steeper rent drops during an economic recession. Meanwhile, suburbs tend to have a greater share of cheaper, lower-density homes that remain in high demand even as renters look to cut costs.

In recent years, suburbs have offered cheaper housing options to those willing to sacrifice the benefits of living close to a job center. But in 2020, this affordability gap is shrinking in many metros that command the highest prices. After a decade in which proximity was at a premium, the pandemic has now sparked the flame of suburban rental demand. As a result, we should expect an uneven rental market recovery in the months to come.

With less than a month until election day, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout continue to be defining issues of the campaign. Over the past week, the president himself has contracted the virus and subsequently called off talks for additional stimulus. Amid this continued volatility, we find that widespread struggles with housing costs have been troublingly stable since the start of the pandemic. And despite their pressing needs, we find that those who are struggling most are least likely to make their voices heard at the ballot box on November 3rd.

In the month since our last housing payments survey, the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 in the US has steadily trended downward, though it remains at a concerning level. As the rate of new infections improves, the process of “reopening the economy” has resumed in many parts of the country, and some furloughed workers have returned to their jobs. The US brought back 1.4 million jobs in August, but the unemployment rate remains at 8.4 percent. And for those who remain unemployed, the expiration of the expanded unemployment benefits provided by the CARES Act has compounded financial concerns.

With millions of Americans continuing to struggle with housing costs, the CDC has issued a temporary halt in evictions through the end of the year, to replace the earlier patchwork of federal, state, and local protections that have now expired. As the situation rapidly evolves, widespread difficulty with housing costs has been a troubling constant. Despite a slight improvement in this month’s data, 29 percent of Americans failed to pay their rent or mortgage in full during the first week of September, and 8 percent had not completed their August payment by the end of the month.