In West, apartment rents still on the rise

SAN FRANCISCO — Apartment rents throughout the western United States are rising amid tougher borrowing standards that have made it more difficult for many people to buy a home.

The average cost of renting an apartment last month increased from last year in all 20 major Western markets covered in a quarterly survey released this past week by the Novato, Calif.-based research firm RealFacts.

The severity of the rent increases varied, rising by double digits in Silicon Valley and Seattle, while hovering in a range of 1 to 2.5 percent in much of California's Central Valley, Las Vegas and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Los Angeles and Orange counties remained the West's most expensive metropolitan market to lease an apartment, with rents last month averaging $1,630 — up 5.5 percent from last year.

In California's high-tech Silicon Valley, an apartment rented for an average of $1,622 last month, up nearly 12 percent from a year ago, well below Silicon Valley's peak apartment rent of $1,959, reached in early 2001, according to RealFacts.

Rents in the San Francisco Bay Area averaged $1,551, up by 7.6 percent.

Rents in Seattle rose 10.7 percent to $1,057 last month. Seattle is the West's only major market outside California where the cost of renting an apartment averaged more than $1,000 per month.

Apartment dwellers in Salt Lake City were hit with the West's third-highest rent increase at 9.7 but paid a relatively modest $769 per month. Tucson, Ariz., was the West's least expensive place to lease an apartment, with rents last month rising 3.1 percent to an average of $662 per month.