The report says rental rates in San Diego County and the rest of Southern California stopped falling and started going up last year. The USC Lusk Center for Real Estate study found San Diego rents rose 4.3 percent last year. The study says rents will climb another 3.4 percent this year and 5.2 percent next. Demand is pushing up prices, but that demand isn't all created from positive economic developments.
"There's definitely a propensity to rent that we didn't have in the past. With so many foreclosures a lot of families have moved from home ownership back into renter-ship," said Tracey Seslin, Senior Research Associate at the Lusk Center.
The Casden Multifamily Forecast found the rising rental rate trend is a dramatic turnaround from 2009, when nearly all the the region's studied by researchers reported rental rates moving down. The regions were split in 2010 and nearly all rose last year.
The rising rents do not signal an economic upswing for the region, because the economic picture is complex and many factors come into play.
"Southern California has been lagging behind the rest of the state and the rest of the nation in terms of job growth," said Seslin.
