Providence apartment rates tick up

PROVIDENCE – The average cost of an apartment in Providence rose 1 percent to $975 a month during the first quarter compared with the previous quarter, said apartment search company Rent Jungle.
The Pittsburgh-based company said the increase amounted to $12. The rent represented the average across all apartments within a 10-mile radius of the geographic center of Providence.
The company tracks rental rates using automated software that crawls the Internet in search of apartment rentals. The proprietary software filters out duplicates and then calculates average rents automatically, Rent Jungle CEO Jon Pastor said.
Across the United States, studio apartments saw the largest percentage increases, up 2 percent to settle at $758 per month. Rents for one-bedroom apartments rose 1 percent to $959 while larger apartments generally saw no rent increase.
Boston; Dallas; Fort Worth, Texas; Honolulu; Miami; Pittsburgh and Tulsa all saw rent increases greater than 3 percent in the first quarter. The majority of cities were unchanged.
“We are seeing some encouraging signs in the overall national rental market,” Pastor said. “In the first quarter, rent nationwide was flat when compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, which is a reversal in what had been a negative trend. Rent in [the fourth quarter of] 2009 was down by approximately 3 percent from the prior quarter, so a flattening in [the first quarter of] 2010 is an improvement.”
Cities where rent declined by 2 percent or more included Fresno, California; Memphis, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Nashville and San Francisco.