Friday, October 19, 2012

Fort Collins-Loveland metro area has highest apartment rents in state

Fort Collins-Loveland metro area has highest apartment rents in state (Denver Post, 10/19/2012)


...
Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing, said that apartment rents in the Fort Collins-Loveland area rose to an average of $996 in the second quarter of this year, the most recent period for which data is available.
That's higher than the $979 for the Denver metro area, which traditionally has the state's highest rents.
McMaken noted that the figures are for metro areas only. "Fort Collins-Loveland is probably not higher than Aspen," he said.
...
"It looks like the two are converging again, so they could reverse themselves," McMaken said. "They have similar rents now because they're the two markets with the most growth and the lowest vacancies."
McMaken said the vacancy rate in Fort Collins-Loveland was 3.5 percent in the second quarter, close to the 3 percent figure that is considered "very low." Denver's vacancy rate in the second quarter was 4.8 percent.
"There's been a ton of new construction in Loveland, and that area has a lower unemployment rate than Denver — substantially lower, in fact," McMaken said.