Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data
23 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2020
Date Written: February 4, 2020
Abstract
Traditional US rental housing data sources such as the American Community Survey and the American Housing Survey report on the transacted market — what existing renters pay each month. They do not explicitly tell us about the spot market — i.e., the asking rents that current homeseekers must pay to acquire housing — though they are routinely used as a proxy. This study compares governmental data to millions of contemporaneous rental listings and finds that asking rents diverge substantially from these most recent estimates. Conventional housing data understate current market conditions and affordability challenges, especially in cities with tight and expensive rental markets.
Keywords: affordability, census, craigslist,data exhaust,economic geography,economic mobility, fair market rent, gentrification, vacancy, HUD, information asymmetries, platform real estate, rental data, rent control, residential mobility, section 8
JEL Classification: O18, R21, R31, R00
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation