Are Rent Growth Estimates 'Completely Made Up?'
If you’re looking to rent an apartment in Atlanta, you may be dismayed and surprised to find that rent in the city rose 14%, 4% and 7% last year—all at the same time.
Those numbers come from Zumper, Zillow and CoStar, respectively, and they are all trying to calculate the same thing, but with an obviously wild range. And Atlanta isn’t an isolated case of confusion, these three data sources tell consistently different stories about the pace of rent growth in cities all over the US, Bloomberg reports.
One reason for the absurd discrepancy is they all use different data and starting points to come to their conclusions. Another, according to Daniel Hertz at City Observatory, is “the vast majority of these rent estimates are completely made up.” [Bloomberg]
