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Rents are inching downward in Jacksonville

The RD River City Brewery apartments were planned for the River City Brewing Company site.
Jacksonville Daily Record
The 326-unit RD River City Brewery apartments are planned for the former River City Brewing Co. site.

Rents are still higher than normal in Jacksonville, but they're coming down.

The Jacksonville metro area was one of 14 nationwide where the price for a new lease declined in the past year, according to new data from the Redfin real estate brokerage. The price fell 0.8% in a year, to a median of $1,595 per month.

Thirty-six cities in the nation saw rents rise from December 2021 to December 2022, Redfin said.

Nationwide, rents rose nearly 5% from a year earlier, the smallest increase in nearly a year and half. Rents were rising three times as fast the year before, an indication that the frenetic market of the past few years is coming to an end.

“Rents have room to fall. While they’ve cooled significantly from their peak, it still costs the typical renter 20% more to take on a new lease than it did two years ago,” Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao wrote. The construction of more apartments should continue to bring the price down in the coming year, Zhao said.

Among metro areas, Jacksonville had the 12th-biggest drop in price. It was the only metro area in Florida where the price of a new lease declined.

Minneapolis had the biggest drop at 8.5%, to $1,704 per month. Salt Lake City had the biggest increase: 29.80%. A new lease there costs $2,256 per month.

Randy comes to Jacksonville from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where, as metro editor, he led investigative coverage of the Parkland school shooting that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He has spent more than 40 years in reporting and editing positions in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Florida. You can reach Randy at rroguski@wjct.org or on Twitter, @rroguski.