Renting a single-family home has become more popular than renting an apartment. A new report from RentCafé found that the number house rentals outpaced apartment rentals by 17 percent.
"We found it interesting that there was such a huge increase on the single-family rental side, especially given the large number of new apartments completed in the last few years," says RentCafé real estate writer Nadia Balint. Realtor.com explains that a surplus of single-family homes hit the market after the financial crisis, which were fixed up and then rented out to tenants who could no longer afford homeownership. Single-family rentals were found to be most popular in Phoenix by 2017.
“It’s a great alternative to apartment living and homeownership," says Mark Wolf, CEO and founder of AHV Communities, which builds communities of detached, single-family homes in the suburbs. "A lot of people want to be mobile. They don’t want to be saddled with mortgage debt, and they want to live maintenance-free.” His company is currently leasing out 1,500- to 2,000-square-foot homes in three suburban Texas subdivisions.
