Renting a house or apartment is near impossible on the Coast, even as prices rise. Why?
Shortages aren’t just on store shelves — anyone looking for an apartment or home to rent in South Mississippi has discovered the selection is scarce.
Apartment occupancy has soared to 97.2% in Mississippi, according to RealPage, which tracks real estate trends across the country. That means fewer than 3% of the apartments and rental homes on the Coast and in the state are available.
A sign posted at Highland Springs Apartment Homes north of Ocean Springs has a message posted on the door for those who show up without an appointment.
“We have no availability to offer and due to the excessively long waiting list, we have decided to block it off,” the message says.
The waiting list will reopen depending on how many units open in the next few months, the sign says.
The gated apartment complex just north of exit 50 of I-10 has amenities like a swimming pool, fitness center and on-site laundry facility. It also is income restricted, which keeps rents at much more affordable rates of $620 for a one-bedroom unit, $743 for two bedrooms and $851 for three bedrooms.
A few miles away at Arbor View Apartments in D’Iberville, the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment — without subsidies to keep down rent — starts at $869 and increases due to size of the unit.
The waiting list for a one-bedroom apartment at Arbor Village in Gulfport is one page long and a $50 application fee is required there and at several other apartment complexes to get on a waiting list list. The wait could be a couple of months or longer, prospective tenants at Arbor Village are advised.
Coast is a hot rental market
The Southeast region has been a popular spot for many renters looking to relocate from expensive gateway markets like Atlanta and Nashville, the report said.
Beach towns are especially desirable, said Jay Parsons, deputy chief economist for RealPage, in the latest marketing intelligence report.
People are moving to cities that aren’t just a spring break destination, he said, and have more going on than a cool beach scene.
Those moving to South Mississippi from other areas of the country find rents lower than at their previous homes.
Mississippi has one of the lowest rents in the country, according to the Rent Report 2021 released in November by ApartmentGuide.com, but Mississippi also has the lowest per capita income in the country.
The average monthly rent nationally for a one-bedroom unit is $1,670. It’s $842 — or about half as much — in Mississippi.
The shortage of apartments is forcing rents up in Mississippi and across the country, with every state seeing a rent increase for one-bedroom apartments in the last year.
The cost of that one-bedroom apartment in Mississippi increased $101 a month in the last year, the report says. Tenants at The Reserve apartment complex in St. Martin recently got notice of a $100 per month increase to over $1,000 per month.
What it’s like to search for home
“I tried to find housing everywhere,” said Tina Greenlee, who returned to the Coast about six months ago after selling her home in North Carolina.
“I sold my house real easy, like in a week,” she said, and at a price $37,000 more than she paid for it.
A disabled veteran, she wants to rent instead of buy a home in South Mississippi. She contacted an independent military housing agency to get help finding a place to live. The agency told her an apartment would open up before she moved, but now the agency no longer is helping civilians, and Greenlee is looking for a place on her own.
She stayed with a friend for awhile. “Now I’m staying at my daughter’s,” she said.
She rented a “nice little house” in the St. Andrews area near Ocean Springs for $850 about five years ago, she said. Now someone is renting it for $1,200.
“Due to the housing shortage and exorbitant rental prices, I have not been able to find any suitable rentals within my means,” she said.
Greenlee said she is on a waiting list for a ground floor apartment near Gautier that she hopes to move into soon.
Why so few rentals?
Like a perfect storm, the reasons why rental occupancy is so high on the Coast are many and all at once.
“More new renters than ever are knocking on the front door, but fewer existing renters than ever are leaving out the back door,” Parsons said.
During COVID-19 a lot of people didn’t move and now are more likely to relocate, said Brian Carberry, managing editor with ApartmentGuide.com, whether in the same city or to a different part of the country.
“In addition, in the beginning of the pandemic, we saw a lot of people move in with friends and family to consolidate households and split bills to save money,” he said. “Some of those people are now moving back out on their own, which is adding to the demand we’re seeing for rental housing right now.
With housing sales prices also soaring, people who can’t afford to buy a home are renting homes or apartments.
“While the home buying market has cooled down from where it was in the beginning of the year, home prices are still up in many areas,” he said, “and people who had hoped to buy a home may have been priced out of the neighborhoods or areas they were looking, so they are continuing to rent.”
Landlords can get more for their apartments as a short-term rental, especially when the rentals are at or near the beach. A two-bedroom apartment in downtown Ocean Springs rents for $146 a night as a vacation rental, which would bring $2,920 a month if rented for 20 days. A luxury rental at the beach in Biloxi or Bay St. Louis can top $1,000 a night.
Wendy Lassebe, property manager for Rental Management in Gulfport, deals strictly in long-term rentals. Recent listings ranged from $550 for a one-bedroom house in Moss Point to $1,600 for a three-bedroom, two bath home in Gulfport.
“We do have people now moving into the area,” she said, and looking to rent homes across the areas she serves across Harrison and Jackson counties.
She gave a number of reasons why rentals are scarce and prices are rising:
▪ The military didn’t transfer during the height of COVID-19, she said, but now her company is getting a lot of military inquiries and leases signed.
▪ During the eviction moratorium, rentals were almost gridlocked, she said, with nobody moving out and no one moving into the area.
▪ Where typically homes and apartments have 10 turnovers of tenants a month, man complexes have only seen one or two turnovers over the last few months.
▪ As the sales prices of homes began to rise, landlords sold their rental homes to cash in on the higher prices.
▪ Little rental home construction was going on during the pandemic.
▪ Rental prices are rising because taxes went up with the latest property appraisal, she said, and insurance rates are increasing.
New apartments coming. Will that help?
Several large apartment complexes are under construction across South Mississippi, which will add to the inventory.
Now a rare sight, signs out along Popp’s Ferry Road show that one- to three-bedroom units are available at the new Landing at D’Iberville complex under construction. One-bedroom apartments start at $1,005. Applications are available online and $350 in fees are required to sign up, including a $50 application fee, a $150 application deposit and a $150 administration fee.
More apartment buildings are going up on U.S. 90 in east Ocean Springs and at Arbor Landing on the River in Biloxi, where several buildings are under construction next to the existing apartment complex.
With long waiting lists at many apartments, these new units could go fast. And the higher cost of lumber and building materials since the pandemic will translate into higher rent.
“While it may help add more overall units to the market, it may actually drive rent prices up even more,” Carberry said. “If the new complexes are luxury or in hot neighborhoods, they will likely be priced at or above the average in that area. This will just slide the mean, and if renters are willing to pay these higher prices, you may see other existing complexes increase their rates to match.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 2:57 PM.