For those of us in Orange County stuck renting, instead of buying, an abode, each year brings clouds of uncertainty as the rental contract expires. For me, in Huntington Beach, since the Great Recession ended I’ve been hit with 5 percent boosts in rent every year.
It’s the price for living in paradise. Or at least what passes for paradise in a state where property rights keep diminishing, meaning the construction of housing supply never keeps up with demand.
Last week, the Register reported, “Orange County apartment rents, already the highest in the region, are forecast to rise by at least $149 a month by the end of 2018, up 9.4 percent from 2015 levels,” as predicted by the USC Casden Multifamily Forecast.
However, the rent increase won’t be that high, Nicolas Dunlap told me; he’s board president of the Apartment Association of Orange County and director of Avanath Capital Management in Irvine. “We’re probably late in the game, the eighth inning,” he said, with the major rent increases behind us.