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The apartment rental market is getting weird. Anyone who has tried to sign a new lease in any major American city in the last 5 years can feel it. Rents seemingly change on a day to day basis, incentives sometimes seem overly generous and the whole thing feels frustratingly opaque. And despite all the weirdness, rental prices are still crazy high in a lot of places. What is going on?

A few weekends ago I walked around the Navy Yard and Buzzard point neighborhoods to see it first hand. And it was definitely odd. There were beautiful new apartments everywhere, but despite the nice weather (for the first time all winter), it was shockingly quiet. For this video, I wanted to dig into some of the reasons for these strange happenings and tried to answer the question is the apartment market breaking (or already broken)?

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
1:20 - Going beyond old school "supply and demand"
2:15 - Why the renter is at such a disadvantage now
3:09 - "4 Months Free Rent" ... generosity, panic or creative accounting?
4:35 - The widening gap between new leases and renewals
5:26 - Increasingly opaque rental pricing
6:25 - Is the system breaking or more optimized than ever before?
7:35 - Not just about occupancy rate anymore
8:08 - Can renters take back some of the power?
10:20 - Time heals all wounds