Currently searching for apartments and I am seeing that prices change daily.
How does this work, and is there any way to predict/calculate on your own when they will rise or drop?
In: Economics
Nope. If there were a way to predict it, you could make a ton of money.
Pricing real estate and rent is all about comparisons to other local, similar transactions. If the guy down the street manages to rent his room for X, and you can rent the same kind of room, more or less, then you can also price yours at X and use that comparison as negotiation leverage with your potential renters.
Sure, there are predictable macro trends, like development in the city, major employers moving in, available inventory. But that’s not terribly useful for predicting individual rises and drops with specific properties.
This is why home owners and landlords will complain about someone in the neighborhood driving down property values for things like failing to maintain the property or the landscaping. Because it does.
They rise/fall based on a number of factors like specific units up for rent, larger supply/demand balance, cost of alternatives (buying a home, renting a room, renting in different location). You’d have to know the specifics of your area. If lots of people are leaving due to work from home freeing them to live elsewhere, rents may go down. If an apartment building converted to condos and reduced the area supply, prices might go up. If a new luxury building was renting to first time tenants and had lots of units available but is now filled up, their supply may have skewed rents upward and the now available apartments are cheaper on average, or if property tax bills raised rents on landlords and they’re passing them on to tenants at renewal time, they may be going up.
Prices for a specific apartment (or extremely similar apartments) change daily where you live? Like 100 Main St, Unit 5 is listed at $1,000 today, but was at $950 yesterday and $1,025 the day before? I’m not saying that’s not true, but you’re seeing daily pricing changes for apartments?
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