The bad news for renters is rent keeps going up. The good news is the increases have slowed.

Average rent reached $1,748 a month in San Diego County at the start of March, increasing 8 percent in a year, said MarketPointe Realty Advisors in a recently released report.

Despite the big yearly jump, the average rent rose just $5 a month in the last six months, or 0.29 percent.

Russ Valone, CEO of MarketPointe, has been tracking San Diego rents since 1988 and said while rent growth has clearly slowed, it’s not out of the norm to have a modest increase at the start of the year and a bigger jump by the end.

His company’s last report in September showed rents had gone up 7.7 percent in six months — the biggest six month increase since he started keeping track — so it wasn’t all that surprising the next jump was a bit less.

“Rents are not always a straight line upswing,” he said.

San Diego rents have increased, on average, 2 percent every six months since 2000.

Valone said rent increases could have slowed for a variety of reasons, including affordability and rents being high enough to push people to buy a home and take on a mortgage instead. Its data covers mostly complexes that have 25 or more units so not all rentals in the county end up in its reports.

MarketPointe looked at 131,762 units in the county, with just one major apartment complex, The Rey, opening in the last six months.

The weighted average rent for a studio in March was $1,372 a month; a one-bedroom, $1,549; two-bedroom, $1,823 a month; three-bedroom, $2,255 a month; and $3,033 a month for a four-bedroom.

Two-bedrooms are the most prevalent unit size, making up 52.5 percent of all units. It is followed by one-bedroom units at 35.5 percent and three-bedrooms making up 7.86 percent. Studios, at 3.76 percent, and four-bedrooms, at 0.40 percent, are the hardest to find.

Overall, the county’s vacancy rate is 2.2 percent. The cheapest units are quickest to go. The vacancy rate for an apartment under $1,200 a month is 2.5 percent. For a unit costing between $2,200 and $2,299 a month, the vacancy rate is 19.9 percent.

Downtown rents run about $2,149 a month, close to the most expensive submarket, coastal North County, where the average rent is $2,126 a month. The cheapest is in East County at $1,418 a month.

The San Diego central market — made up of downtown, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, North Park — has the most new apartment units under construction at 2,045. The Highway 78 corridor (San Marcos, Vista and Escondido) has 290 units under construction, and South County has 767. East and North County coastal areas, as well as the Interstate 15 corridor (Poway, Rosemont, Ramona), don’t have anything under construction, Marketpointe said.

Source: SDuniontribune by Phillip Molnar