All signs had pointed to Chesapeake in the eyes of longtime Hampton resident Kamilah Bittle for several years now.
The job opportunities for the 42-year-old were abundant, and a place in the Great Bridge or Greenbrier neighborhoods would be closer to family for Bittle and her 13-year-old daughter. So started the arduous months-long search to find a place with her mind made up.
“I tried everything from homeownership, working with a realtor and mortgage broker, to posting and joining Facebook groups to looking at Zillow and Realtor.com, driving through neighborhoods looking for signs posted for rent,” Bittle said. “I don’t think there’s a T or I I didn’t dot or cross in my search along the way.”
After discouragement, she found a place in the Greenbrier neighborhood. She spent her first night in her new rented condo on Wednesday.
“I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders,” she said. But it cost her more than time and effort.
“Let’s just say my rent from Hampton to move to Chesapeake was an additional $600 per month to move to Chesapeake,” Bittle said. “That’s a big jump.”
The median rent for a one-bedroom in Chesapeake rose by the highest rate in the country year-over-year, according to the annual national rent report by Zumper, a housing rental search website.
Rents in Chesapeake are up just over 38% since last September, according to the Norfolk metro area-specific report from Zumper. Rents in Newport News grew by just over a third in the 12 months ending September while rent prices in Norfolk grew by 22.9%. The Zumper annual national rent and Norfolk metro reports were issued in October.
The state median rent for a one-bedroom unit was $1,557 a month in September, and the median rental units in Chesapeake were going for just under that at $1,450, according to Zumper. Virginia Beach and Hampton follow closely behind at $1,440 and $1,430, respectively, and were in second and third place for price growth in the report that did not include Suffolk.
“Looking at the report, of the six cities, five of them have double-digit year-over-year rent price growth,” said Crystal Chen, a spokesperson for Zumper. “It just seems like this metro area has seen a lot more interest in the past year.”
There are many factors that are playing into rents becoming more expensive, such as rising interest rates pushing homes further out of reach for borrowers and putting them back into the rental market and the lack of supply of homes for sale, Chen said. Additionally, there are factors that could be driving people to areas like Hampton Roads, she said.
There are roughly 5,000 households that are at or below 50% of the area median income, $42,000 a year for a family of three, that are paying more than half their income on rent and utilities, said John Kownack, executive director of the Chesapeake Redevelopment and Housing Authority. He also said there are roughly 2,900 households whose income is less than 30% of the area median income paying more than half their income each month on rent.
Additionally, the authority administers the housing choice voucher program for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and those who have vouchers can’t even find places, Kownack said. The vouchers bridge the gap between income and the cost of rent and utilities of a two-bedroom unit up to $1,462 a month, he said.
“Right now, we have over 150 families or individuals that have been awarded rental assistance but are still looking for a place to use their rental assistance,” Kownack said. He said that indicates the fair market rent rate, set by HUD at $1,329 a month for a two-bedroom unit in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC metro area, is still not accurate as the data used to set the fair market rent rates is on a lag and the increases in rent have been sudden.
Kownack said the waitlist for Chesapeake housing choice vouchers is 9,100 individuals or families as of Thursday and was last opened in January 2020.
“Any time in the last two decades, any time we have a waitlist opening, we’ll get more than 10,000 (individuals or families) sign up in one or two days,” Kownack said.
Despite the increases in rent, there are signs things are slowing down from analysis by groups such as Zumper, the National Apartment Association and OnePage, a property management software company.
Though winter is typically a slower time for the rental market, cuts to rents in October were the third largest in more than a dozen years clocking in at 0.6% and driven by weakening demand, according to a OnePage report released Thursday.
Nearly three out of four of the nation’s largest 150 metro areas saw rents decrease in October compared to less than 13% in October 2021, according to the report.
“It wouldn’t be surprising to see deeper-than-usual rent reductions this winter, giving back some of the big gains from the past two years,” the report said. “The big question is if demand will return next March when the next leasing season traditionally begins. If the job market remains strong, pent-up demand for housing should be unlocked in spring 2023 — but that’s admittedly a big if.”
Ian Munro, 757-861-3369, ian.munro@virginiamedia.com
