Last September I wrote an open letter to Missoulians waiting for the housing market to crash, and much to the chagrin of many Missoulians, that hasn't happened yet. In many cities rent is actually falling right now, and I want to feel happy for them but mostly I'm just jealous. With inflation as high as it is it would be nice to have at least some relief in the form of cheaper housing costs. Trying to comprehend our real-estate situation is dizzying, but I found some clarity from the Q3 Five Valleys Housing Report Update from the Missoula Organization of Realtors.

According to the housing report update, the cost of rent is up 8.62% in the 3rd quarter of this year compared to last year. Now before you throw the nearest object at your screen, here's the good news: the rate rental costs are increasing is decelerating.  The cost of rent was up 15.79% in quarter 3 of 2021 compared to quarter 3 of 2020.

The cost of rent is so much higher than it was before the pandemic-housing boom, it almost makes me wonder if we'll ever see the cost of rent that low again. In the last two years combined, we've had an almost 25% increase in the cost of rent.

To put that into perspective, in the housing report update, property manager Paul Burow said "last year was the first time that we had data that showed a 'two bedroom' crossed a $1000 median-rent price and this year a 'one bedroom' is about to cross that price."

All of the figures mentioned in this article are spoken by Paul Burow in the Q3 Five Valleys Housing Report Update from the Missoula Organization of Realtors in the video below starting at 9:39 through 11:05.

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