Spike in Inland apartment rents

The cost of renting an apartment in the Inland Empire is going up.

Landlords in Riverside and San Bernardino counties with 100 or more apartment units were charging new tenants an average of $1,204 a month in rent between September and December of last year, according to a report in The Press-Enterprise.

That’s a 5.4 percent increase compared with the same four-month period in 2013, or $62 more per month.

The report cited data from RealFacts, a web site based at the University of California, Berkeley, that collects and analyzes rental information. The report pertained to asking rents, which are what landlords ask from prospective tenants, not necessarily what they end up paying.

The average “effective” rental rates – the amount paid after discounts and other concessions are accounted for – was $1,105 a month.

Inland apartment vacancies are stable, up only four-tenths of one percent one percent from one year ago. The average occupancy rate was 95.1 percent, up from 93.1 percent during the last four months of 2012, the report stated.