After years of unbridled rent growth, a reckoning is on the horizon for U.S. landlords as a softening apartment market and rising expenses push the ball closer to the tenants’ court.
New-lease asking rents rose just under 2% during the 12-month period ending in May, down from the double-digit increases seen a year ago and representing the largest deceleration in recent history, according to data aggregated by The Wall Street Journal from six national property data sources.