Renters’ Market Redux
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007Rental housing in Washtenaw County is extremely expensive, a new report from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition claims. Of course, the article in the News compares it only to housing in other parts of Michigan, allowing perpetual industry cheerleader Alice Ehn to trot out the evergreen “It’s only because Washtenaw County still has jobs.” What isn’t mentioned, that you can find on the NLIHC website, is that the median price for a two-bedroom in Washtenaw County, $934, is one dollar less than that in the Chicago area.
When you compare Ann Arbor to Madison, it gets even more interesting. The median renter income in Madison is slightly higher than that in A2. However, rental prices are significantly lower, with the exception of four-bedroom apartments:
| Madison | Ann Arbor | |
| 0-br | $525 | $685 |
| 1-br | $656 | $758 |
| 2-br | $775 | $934 |
| 3-br | $1040 | $1175 |
| 4-br | $1288 | $1210 |
These kinds of statistics are always frustrating because they leave out so many things that any beginning statistics student would want to know: what’s the standard deviation? How does the condition of apartments compare in the two towns? How much more expensive is it to live in the center of town than on the outskirts? But this may provide a little perspective on recent claims about a “renter’s market”.