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Housing affordability is an issue in the race for the White House. Both campaigns are vowing to make it easier to build as people across the country struggle with rising rents. Experts say a shortage of homes and apartments is the main problem. In Austin, Texas, a building boom has led to a historic number of new apartments, and now rents have been falling for more than a year, as Audrey McGlinchy with member station KUT reports.
AUDREY MCGLINCHY, BYLINE: Leigh Vladyka moved into a new apartment recently. The 28-year-old still has a few things to unpack, like a couple pieces of art.
LEIGH VLADYKA: This one's my favorite just 'cause of the colors - this blue-green.
MCGLINCHY: Vladyka is a public school art teacher. He grew up in the Austin area, where both his parents also worked as teachers. For the past year, Vladyka paid about $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, a pretty typical rent for Austin. But it ate up about half of his monthly take-home pay.
VLADYKA: I knew that I could not keep paying that.
MCGLINCHY: So this summer Vladyka went in search of cheaper rent, and he found it - a similar apartment for $275 less per month. He says he's using that extra money to pay off credit card and medical debt.
VLADYKA: I have a lot more wiggle room. That 275 goes far.
MCGLINCHY: According to recent data from the real estate company Zillow, average rent prices are rising in many of the country's largest cities, including all of the 10 largest metro areas, on average by about 3%. But rents in Austin are down roughly 4% year over year, which is dramatic given that Austin-area rents have consistently risen over the past decade, with prices spiking in 2022.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Austin's rent increase year over year ranked second nationally. That's according to data from Redfin. The real estate brokerage company finds the Lonestar State's capital saw a 35% increase in average rent prices.
MCGLINCHY: The city's population grew by 5% between 2020 and 2022 as Austin became a hot spot for remote workers. All of these newcomers needed homes. So rent shot up, and builders got to work. A year into the pandemic, the Austin metro was at the start of a construction boom. Jake Wegmann teaches real estate economics at the University of Texas at Austin.
JAKE WEGMANN: Think of all the ingredients together - rising rents, rock-bottom interest rates and a huge amount of migration to Austin from other cities. It seemed like a really great place to get into the apartment-owning business if you weren't already in it.
MCGLINCHY: That surge saw Austin metro area cities issuing permits for new homes, in some cases, at four times the rate of other cities, including Phoenix, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
VLADYKA: Austin - it wasn't just first place. It was first place by a mile.
MCGLINCHY: It's a boom some politicians want to replicate across the country. Both presidential candidates have proposed policies to spur housing construction, including tax incentives and opening federal land to building. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has pledged to incentivize the construction of 3 million new homes. But even as rents in Austin have fallen, they're still much higher than before the pandemic. And dropping rents paired with higher construction costs mean the metro's building boom has slowed, which has some people wondering what the future may hold.
On a steamy Sunday afternoon, I met Robert and Renee Summers sitting under a tree in one of Austin's biggest parks. The two moved here over a year ago to be closer to their daughter. They sold their home in Alabama and became renters.
RENEE SUMMERS: The rent is - what? - about $800 more than our mortgage payment was.
MCGLINCHY: They now pay $2,000 a month for a townhome. Rent consumes about a third of their monthly pay.
SUMMERS: It's just barely manageable. He still works, but - and I just recently started drawing Social Security. So - but even with all of that, it's still, you know, tight.
MCGLINCHY: The Summers say they plan to negotiate their rent down when their lease comes up for renewal soon. Economists predict rents will keep falling for the next year but then may begin to rise again since construction has slowed. The question now for Austin and other cities is how to keep building and what policies might best disrupt the usual real estate boom-and-bust cycle. For NPR News, I'm Audrey McGlinchy in Austin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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