CINCINNATI — For years, Cincinnati had some of the biggest apartment rent increases in the country. At the moment, those rent increases appear to be leveling off.
A new report from Apartment List found the average rent in Cincinnati is now $1,041, 25% lower than the national average.
Rent grew 0.3% so far this year, which is considerably lower than the 3.5% growth the city saw in 2023.
Brandon Rudd, director of the Center for Research and Data at the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, attributes the flatline to construction.
“Now that we’ve seen this kind of bit of a construction boom over the last couple of years and more units coming online … [rent growth is] flat,” Rudd said.
Rudd’s team recently reviewed housing data for city neighborhoods over the past decade. The report found only 18 of 52 city neighborhoods added net positive housing units.
“Most neighborhoods have not added any new housing units — even at a time while the city was growing,” Rudd said.
Meanwhile, the report found an inverse correlation between housing units and housing costs. The Cincinnati neighborhoods that built the most housing units saw the smallest increases in housing costs, he said.
“If we want to stem the tide of rent increases throughout the city,” Rudd said, “we have to be willing to make the reforms to build housing across the city, and not just in a handful of neighborhoods.
Roughly one-third of new housing units built in the city are located downtown, with more on the way due to the conversion of office buildings into residential units.
The city’s vacancy rate is now 4.86%, the highest in three years, according to Apartment List. As that number rises, landlords must compete with each other on rent prices, keeping them competitive.
“Just like anything else, supply and demand governs that relationship,” he said. “The more housing you build, the more those rents come down.”
It’s a phenomenon the city knows. Council member Mark Jeffreys said the city is reviewing how its permitting process compared to other cities both locally and nationally.
“The reality is, most of the developers left in the city are homegrown. They are based in Cincinnati,” he said. “The reason being that we are just too difficult to do business with.”
In a separate but related measure, city council will review zoning changes in the coming months as part of the city’s “Connected Communities” initiative. That would make it easier to build housing in neighborhood business districts and along major transportation corridors.
“It's really hard to build in our city,” Rudd said. “Connected Communities would say, simply, you can build the types of things that you used to be able to build in Cincinnati again.”
Transforming the development situation in the city will take time, Rudd said: “Nobody’s neighborhood is going to change overnight.”
Jeffreys said the city wants to continue to stay affordable: “We don't want to be in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, where people are priced out of living there.”
“The only way to do that is to build more housing,” said Jeffreys. “You’re either growing or you’re dying, and in order to grow population, you have to have housing.”
