Dive Brief:
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More than 20% of rental households in Fulton County, GA, which includes areas in and around Atlanta, received an eviction notice in 2015 and 12.2% were forcibly displaced, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
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Some zip codes recorded a larger share of those evictions than did others, with rates of over 40% receiving an eviction notice and 15% evicted in some areas. The report found that large, corporate owners of single-family rentals (companies with more than 15 single-family homes) in Fulton County evicted occupants at a higher rate than did landlords with fewer properties.
- Although the bank’s report focuses on the Atlanta market, the issue persists nationally as investment companies, hedge funds and private equity firms bought up foreclosed properties across the country after the housing crash, converting them to rentals, Bloomberg reported.
Dive Insight:
A recent report in the Journal of Regional Science highlighted the issue of affordability in the rental market, noting that rents increased by 28.7% nationwide from 1970 to 2010 while incomes grew only 13.8%. The gap was even greater in large metros like New York.
The increase in rents is particularly pronounced on the West Coast, with real estate website Zillow forecasting in October that Seattle and Portland, OR, would see the most significant rent increases for the year ahead, followed by Denver, San Francisco, and San Jose, CA. It comes as inventory faces pressure from a surge in demand driven by an influx of young professionals to the region’s tech hubs.
In Washington, DC, for example, an increase in new residential construction — particularly high-end multifamily — is driving up rents district-wide and is putting pressure on affordable housing. As a result, many low-income residents can’t afford to rent or purchase a home there. A recent report from the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute noted that DC’s lowest-income residents spend more than half of their income on housing.
Affordability issues are expanding beyond big metros to include smaller markets as buyers and renters seek lower-cost housing elsewhere and job centers shift, a recent report from Overflow Data found.
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