Cincinnati Apartment Owners Seeing More 'Renters by Choice'
Across the country more people are choosing to rent, rather than buy. In fact, by 2030 roughly 40% of the country could be renting as the homeownership rate drops to towards 60% percent.
The flexibility offered by apartment renting is drawing ‘renters by choice’ away from homeownership. This phenomena is manifesting at both ends of age spectrum — and not just in core urban markets like New York and San Francisco. Take, for example, what is happening in the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash, as recently reported by WCPO-9’s Lisa Bernard-Kuhn.
She spoke with developer Hills Properties and some of their first tenants at a newly built luxury property.
The upscale community, where rents range from $1,150 to $2,200, is among a host of new apartment developments targeting a growing group of “renters by choice,” says Kelly Johnson, vice president of operations at Hills Properties, the developer behind 49 Hundred.
“In the past, many people perceived renters as someone who couldn’t afford to buy a home, but that’s just not the case anymore,” Johnson said. “Every day, we see people who are selling their home, or downsizing and they’re looking for luxury living in an apartment community.”
While the true renter-by-choice will have the income to fill Class A product in a given submarket, that doesn’t mean you won’t find them signing leases at a well taken care of Class B product.
More people choosing to live in apartments contributes to higher overall demand, which should ultimately push multifamily fundaments upward, regardless of product type.