APARTMENT NEWS

ARCHIVES 2009:

Apartment Vacancy Rate Rises in Charleston as Residents Cut Back - 040909
Greenville News (SC), by Katy Stech

In Charleston, S.C., more and more financially strapped apartment residents are moving back home with their families or doubling up and becoming roommates with other residents. A new Real Data study supports these findings. The report on Charleston found that the metro area's apartment vacancy rate has soared from 10 percent just this past August to 15.3 percent currently.

For most of the past decade, Real Data President Charles Dalton says the rate for the Charleston area typically has hovered between 6 percent and 8 percent. He states, "That's a very big increase, but every market has seen vacancy rates shooting up pretty dramatically." It hasn't helped that South Carolina's unemployment rate, which was 7.6 percent in August, has since jumped to 11 percent. Dalton laments, "If there's no employment growth, there's no demand for additional housing, whether it's houses, apartments, condominiums [or] anything." Real Data estimates that 1,200 apartments were added to the total since the company's last market analysis in the summer of 2008, a nearly 5 percent increase in the area's overall inventory.

Meanwhile, the average monthly rental rate has remained relatively stable at $754. However, that figure does not reflect the financial incentives that many apartment owners are offering to entice residents.
Web Link