Data Point: 2024-03-24, Revisting The ZORI
The ZORI is the Zillow Observed Rent Index from, you guessed it, Zillow, Zillow provides a variety of data at their Data page. We periodically check in on the ZORI to see what it says about rents in Grand Rapids.
Zillow's definition of the ZORI: "A smoothed measure of the typical observed market rate rent across a given region. ZORI is a repeat-rent index that is weighted to the rental housing stock to ensure representativeness across the entire market, not just those homes currently listed for-rent. The index is dollar-denominated by computing the mean of listed rents that fall into the 40th to 60th percentile range for all homes and apartments in a given region, which is once again weighted to reflect the rental housing stock. Details available in ZORI methodology."
And, the graph:
The bold yellow line in the trend line, and the red line the reported values. Remarkably consistent.
December to December rent increases:
| 2015-12-31 | 2016-12-31 | 2017-12-31 | 2018-12-31 | 2019-12-31 | 2020-12-31 | 2021-12-31 | 2022-12-31 | 2023-12-31 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $907 | $989 | $1,038 | $1,115 | $1,169 | $1,243 | $1,374 | $1,502 | $1,602 |
| - | +9% | +5% | +7% | +5% | +6% | +11% | +9% | +7% |
| - | - | - | - | +37% |
At least the increases have tapered off from the +11% of 2021. Still, a +37% increase over the last file years is: yikes! 🥺