By Catherine Reagor | Arizona Republic
Justin Bullinger and Leah Runyan moved into a one-bedroom midtown Phoenix apartment in 2021. Their rent was $1,600 a month.
Early this year, it jumped by $500 a month. The couple moved because they couldn’t afford it.
“We loved our apartment and were happy with the home we made there,” Bullinger said. “We were very disappointed to have to pick up and leave because the cost just became outrageous.”
The couple ended up moving to Los Angeles a few months later because though they won’t be saving anything on rent, the incomes are higher, he said.
Their Phoenix apartment complex sold in 2020 just as an investor buying spree of Valley apartments took off. A Los Angeles-based private real estate firm bought the couple’s former complex for about $65 million, and rents quickly went up.
Hedge funds and other real estate investors, many from out of state, paid almost $27.3 billion for 517 Valley apartments during the pandemic years 2021-22, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of real estate records.
Metro Phoenix rents spiked more than 35% during the investor buying spree. Last month, eviction filings climbed to rival the record from 2005.
Arizona housing advocates have been watching the trend with alarm because the state has a housing shortage and a growing homeless population.
There’s also concern metro Phoenix will lose more residents like Bullinger and Runyan, who can’t afford the higher rents on the area’s typical incomes.
The rent and eviction problem
National research shows many of the big investors who bought apartments during the past few years need to squeeze a lot of profit out of their pricey purchases. That not only means higher rents but also less money spent maintaining the complexes and fewer landlords accepting housing vouchers.
The Valley’s average rent hit $1,691 at the end of last year, compared with $1,250 at the end of 2020, according to ABI Multifamily.
Metro Phoenix eviction filings climbed in August to rival the monthly record set almost 20 years ago. Landlords filed to evict renters 7,693 times last month, according to the Maricopa County Justice Courts.
That’s about 200 fewer Valley eviction filings from the August record set in 2005.
The average eviction judgment was $3,190 last month, almost double the typical Valley monthly rent.
Arizona’s homeless population increased by 23% between 2020 and 2022, coinciding with the big investor apartment buying spree.
And almost 520,000 metro Phoenix residents are paying more for housing than they can afford, according to the latest data from the Maricopa Association of Governments.
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