The Rent Crisis: How Corporate Landlords Raise Rents 60% Faster While Half of Renters Are Cost-Burdened

Half of All Renters Now Spend More Than 30% of Income on Housing

Housing cost burden - defined as spending more than 30% of household income on housing - has reached record levels for three consecutive years. In 2023, 22.6 million renter households were cost-burdened, up from 20.2 million a decade earlier. Of these, 12.1 million were severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their income on rent.^[1]

The burden falls hardest on low-income renters. Among households earning less than $30,000 per year, 83% are cost-burdened. After paying rent, these households have a median of just $250 per month remaining for food, transportation, healthcare, childcare, and all other expenses. For the cost-burdened subset, the residual is even lower: $170 per month.^[1]

The Corporate Landlord Rent Premium

A 2024 working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia provides the first large-scale quantification of how institutional landlords affect rents. Analyzing single-family rental data from 2010 to 2021, researchers Keyoung Lee and David Wylie found that institutional investors raise rents at rates 60% higher than average when they first acquire properties.^[2]

The implications extend beyond individual properties. When institutional investors enter a neighborhood in sufficient numbers, they establish a new pricing floor that pushes up rents across the entire area - including for properties they don't own. This neighborhood-wide effect means the impact of institutional investment on renters is larger than the investor share alone would suggest.

A separate survey of 1,000 renters found that 32% of tenants renting from corporate landlords experienced three or more rent increases in a three-year period, roughly double the rate for tenants renting from private, individual landlords.^[5] Research from Princeton's Journal of Public and International Affairs documents the widespread use of algorithmic pricing tools such as RealPage by institutional landlords, which coordinate pricing across properties and contribute to above-market rent increases.^[6]

7.6 Million Affordable Rental Units Have Disappeared

Between 2013 and 2023, the number of rental units available for under $1,000 per month (adjusted for inflation) fell from 24.8 million to 17.2 million - a loss of 7.6 million units, or 31%. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found this decline occurred in every state, not just high-cost coastal markets.^[3]

This loss is driven by multiple factors: older affordable units are demolished or deteriorate out of the housing stock, existing units are renovated and rented at higher prices, and new construction overwhelmingly targets the high end of the market. In 2023, the median asking rent for newly constructed apartments was $1,750 - far above what low-income renters can afford.^[3]

Institutional investors accelerate this dynamic. When corporate landlords acquire older, lower-cost rental properties, they typically invest in cosmetic renovations and raise rents to market rate, converting formerly affordable units into mid-market housing. This strategy - known in the industry as “value-add” investing - is explicitly designed to increase rental income, often by 20–40% per unit.^[8]

The Housing Wage: What Workers Must Earn to Afford Rent

The National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual “Out of Reach” report calculates the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home at HUD's fair market rent without spending more than 30% of income. In 2025, the national “Housing Wage” for a two-bedroom apartment is $33.63 per hour - 4.6 times the federal minimum wage of $7.25.^[4]

A minimum-wage worker in the United States would need to work approximately 93 hours per week - more than two full-time jobs - to afford a two-bedroom rental at the national average fair market rent. In no state, metropolitan area, or county in the United States can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent.^[4]

Rent Growth Has Outpaced Wages

Since 2020, national rents have increased approximately 35% while median household income has risen roughly 19%. This gap - rents growing nearly twice as fast as incomes - has pushed millions of additional households into cost-burdened status.^[9]

While rents have declined modestly from their 2022 peak - down approximately 5.9% nationally - they remain far above pre-pandemic levels. The recent decline is primarily driven by a surge in new multifamily construction, which has pushed vacancy rates to 7.4%, the highest since 2017. However, this new supply is concentrated at the high end: the median asking rent for new units is $1,750 per month, doing little to alleviate the affordable housing shortage.^[9]

What the Data Shows

The rent crisis is not the result of a single cause. It reflects the convergence of several structural forces: insufficient housing construction, institutional investor acquisition of rental housing, population growth outpacing supply, and stagnating wages relative to housing costs. These are the same forces addressed by the five proposals in The Affordability and Immigration Act of 2026.

Sources & Methodology