Report: El Paso Rental Activity up 21%; Nationally, Renting back to Pre-Pandemic Levels

According to a new report from RentCafe’, rental activity makes a comeback to pre-pandemic levels, and El Paso is right in the thick of the trend.

Overall, looking at the first half of 2021, renting activity saw an upswing of 13% compared to the same time of last year.

Here’s a glimpse of the rental activity in El Paso:

• The overall renter activity in the city increased by 21% compared to last year, almost the same as in cities like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio (all 22%), but less than Austin’s 28%. Here we include renters who moved within El Paso itself, as well as renters coming from outside the city.
• Gen Z, the youngest generation of renters – the oldest of whom turn 24 this year – saw a 55% surge in rental applications compared to last year. Young El Paso renters here outpaced even the national trend, where Gen Z applications rose 39%.
• Looking at renters by income, those earning $50-75K saw the greatest upswing compared to how many applied for rent last year – 69%. Contrary to the national trend, renters earning over $100K have seen a decline of 8% in application count.
• While renters who chose to move in the city have seen a surge of 47%, many have also packed their bags to move out. Among the preferred destinations of former El Paso renters are Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, AZ, and Denver, CO. There was a 50% increase in renters opting to move out of El Paso.

Renting activity is back to pre-pandemic levels — up 13% in the first half of 2021 compared to the same time last year — and two groups of people are primarily responsible for it.

Specifically, analysis of nationwide rental applications by age groups showed that the main players who propelled this renewed activity were Zoomers, who accounted for the largest increase in applications for apartments — 39% compared to the year prior — most of whom were entering the rental market for the first time. When we consider renters by income, those who earned upwards of $100,000 were the most active this year, with 34% more than last year.

To see the complete picture of what renting looks like in the aftermath of the pandemic, RentCafe researchers extracted in-depth market and demographic insights by analyzing 2.5 million nationwide renter applications from RentGrow.

Methodology

• Rental application data was sourced from RentGrow, Inc. and was received wholly anonymized and aggregated. No personally identifiable or other confidential renter information was disclosed or used in conjunction with this article. 

• The top 30 largest U.S. cities are ranked by population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 ACS one-year estimate. 

• The analysis is based on data from around 2.5 million rental applications from RentGrow, Inc. for approximately 34,000 apartment communities. Only properties that had data available for all years pertinent to the analysis were included. 

• Gen Z is defined as the generation born between 1997 and 2012; Millennials are defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996; Gen X includes those born between 1965 and 1980; and Baby Boomers are those born between 1946 and 1964.

To read the full report, click here; for our previous stories on rent, click here.