Rental prices don't always go up

[Chris Martin]

I had a discussion last week with a REI guy who basically said rents never go down. While I politely disagreed, he insisted it was true. Indeed, for him and his limited experience, rents always go up may seem factually correct. The interesting thing was his investment (as is my company's apartment) is in Greenville NC, which is in Pitt county... a . Below is a screenshot of what HUD's view is of Greenville NC's Fair Market Rents. Note rents are down about 4% from last year. 

As an exercise, I would be curious to see what other MSAs and counties have seen increases or decreases, along with their tier designation. Please post for your area. The HUD data is easy to find on their and the North Carolina Department of Commerce annual ranking is here:

I had an interesting PM with @Adam Schneider  about the local (Raleigh) market where we both have investments. I don't know if rent 'weakness' in Tier 2 counties is a precursor to a rent top or rent slowdown in top tier counties or not. With BP Nation input, maybe we can get a picture of the collective NC markets. 

[Adam Schneider]

@Chris Martin -- do you think it's reasonable to say that rents are impacted by a combo of inventory for sale, inventory for rent, population, and interest rates? I wonder if the TAA and other local apartment associations post data or do surveys? Anecdotally, it feels like the Triangle is slowly going up--but we haven't had hiccups in population growth, which will likely be part of what causes rents to stagnate or drop, no?