Rent Bacon: March 2012
- 04
- May
Chicago overall could not sustain the lofty year-over-year rent gains of February. Note that most of the gains shown here were in market time, not rent. (Corrected July 2012)
Details for March 2012
| Average Rent | Average Market Time | Total Rented | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 | |||
| March 2011 | $2213 | 56 days | 187 |
| March 2012 | $2375 | 36 days | 185 |
| Zone 2 | |||
| March 2011 | $1862 | 54 days | 84 |
| March 2012 | $1942 | 38 days | 115 |
| Zone 3 | |||
| March 2011 | $1334 | 54 days | 27 |
| March 2012 | $1361 | 62 days | 36 |
Stats reflect pricing and activity for 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartments rented by Realtors and listed in ConnectMLS.
What is Rent Bacon?
Rent Bacon is a quick visual summary of what’s happening in the rental market this month compared with this time last year. It breaks the city down into three zones. For each zone, it takes the change in average rent rates and the change in average market times as percentages, and then averages the two percentages together.
Zone 1 covers central Chicago from South Loop through Lincoln Park. (Actual coordinates: 2000 South to 2000 North, from Western Ave to the Lake).
Zone 2 covers the near North side of Chicago, including Lakeview, Bucktown, Uptown, Lincoln Square, Roscoe Village and NorthCenter. (Actual coordinates: 2000 North to 5200 North, from Western Ave to the Lake.)
Zone 3 covers the Far North and Near South side of Chicago, including Edgewater, Andersonville, Rogers Park, West Ridge, Chinatown, Bridgeport and Douglas. (Actual coordinates: 5200-7600 North plus 2000-4500 South, from Western Ave to the Lake.)
Want more Bacon? Here's last month's update.
So I am reading wrong or is Albany park the “dead zone”?
Albany Park is in Zone 3, yes. However, it bucked the trend of the rest of its zone. Rent Bacon looks at just 2 bed/2 bath units as a barometer. I just ran the same search for all rentals in Albany Park and found that rents went up 28%, market times fell off by 20%, and the total units rented doubled year over year.
So, if I were doing just Albany on its own and expanding the field to include all sizes of apartments, it would be Up 24%.
Thank you so much. You are awesome. That is a good it of info.
Happy to do breakouts for other areas and sizes as needed. Now that I’ve got the search set up it’s very easy to point it at other portions of the market.
Further analysis – larger groups, which take longer to decide on a place, are getting forced out of Zones 1 & 2 with their increasing rents and short market times. These big groups are spilling over into Zone 3, tilting it towards the larger & more expensive apartments.
I’d make a bet that if I broke out by size we’d see that most of the increase in Albany is in the 3 bed & up market while studios and 1 beds remain consistent or even fall off a bit.
Baird & Warner – City North liked this on Facebook.