The explosive cost of rent around the country continued to cool in December, according to a report released Thursday, but one expert says the high prices of the past two years are likely to be “the new normal” for Orlando, Florida.
The median rent in metro Orlando was $2,130 per month in December, up about 2% from November, according to the latest report from Rent.com. The metro area includes prices from Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties.
December’s rent was 3.95% higher than the same time last year, a slower rate of growth than the 4.77% average increase nationally, but Rent researcher Jon Leckie says that’s because Orlando prices have already risen so much.
“[Orlando] has been elevated for a while,” Leckie said. “You’re mellowing at a high.”
The median rent in Florida was up 23.9% over the same time in 2021, the highest rate of growth in the country, followed by New York at 20.1%. But that’s down from Florida’s peak of a 31.4% increase in May.
“We’re going to get back to normal changes, but that base-level rent is still going to be much higher than it was before the pandemic,” Leckie said. “We’ve risen to a new normal.”
In early 2020, Orlando’s rents were hovering at about $1,550 per month, according to Leckie, meaning the average renter is paying nearly $600 a month more than they were three years ago.
Bridgette King, who owns a rental home in Orlando’s Hourglass District, says that people need to know that expenses for landlords have also gone up.
“What [renters] often fail to acknowledge is the increase in costs to the owners,” she said.
King, 53, says she just renewed the lease for her tenants in the three-bedroom home for $2,175 per month, an increase of $150 a month from the previous year.
She says that between increases in insurance, property taxes and the costs of maintenance, “I’m making less on that property now that when I bought it” in 2018.
A self-employed public relations agent, King says the rent isn’t her only income.
“But it’s still an investment,” she said. “It still needs a reasonable [return] to make it a worthwhile investment for us.”
This is why, King says, she got nervous last year when the county put a rent control measure on the ballot. “If you have a 10% cap on how much you can increase rent, but you have 14% increase in your expenses, that’s scary to me,” she said.
The measure, which would impose a one-year cap of rent hikes for potentially 104,000 apartments in Orange County, won at the polls but was ruled invalid by a state judge. The county is appealing that ruling to the Florida Supreme Court.
King says she knows she could charge more in that neighborhood, but she would rather keep the tenants she has than find new ones. “They pay on time every month,” she said.
Had the tenants not renewed, King says she and her husband would definitely have moved the rent “closer to market rate.”
An Orlando resident for 11 years, King argues it is the renters who dictate what market rate is because “they’re the ones who are willing to pay it.”
“Landlords can raise the rent to anything they want,” she said. “If no one is willing to pay it, they’re going to have to bring it down. This is basic supply and demand.”
But Leckie says renters won’t find lower prices to choose from anymore.
“People are looking at it as the new ceiling of what people will pay,” he said. “I think it’s better to look at it as a new floor.”
