COLORADO SPRINGS — The cost of rent continues to rise throughout the country, and it's increasing especially quick in Colorado Springs.
A new report from Apartment List ranks cities based on which one had the highest rent increase in the past five years, and Colorado Springs comes in second place.
The report puts Stockton, California, in the number one spot. It also shows rent in Colorado Springs as increasing by 27.3% over the last five years. Aurora also comes in at number seven on the list.
Numbers like that have forced many people to get creative, so they can make it in this competitive housing market.
One of those residents is Angie White, whose family moved into a home with another family and now splits rent with them. She said the move happened around a year and a half ago, to help their friends who just had a baby.
"Five bedroom home, and we pay $1,425, but down here in Widefield. And honestly, it took us a while to find something that we, both families would be comfortable paying," said White, who is also a broker assistant and the office manager at Harris Group Realty.
Others with Harris Group Realty said they are not surprised at all by Colorado Spring's place in the list.
"I've heard horror stories of people going up $250 on a renewal," said Mike Harris, a property manager and residential real estate agent for Harris Group Realty.
Harris said the market really started to pick up in 2015 and 2016.
"It was a really hard year, because I saw a lot of people get outpriced, a lot of locals, people that grew up here, get outpriced of their own neighborhoods," Harris said.
Harris also said Colorado Springs made the list, as opposed to places like Denver, likely because our rent prices were cheaper five years ago.
"I think as a whole we've slowed down. The only problem is that again we have such a high floor now, that the price of living has not kept up with what people are getting paid," Harris said.
The best advice Harris said he had for tenants is to take good care of the property, but he also said he wants to see affordable housing solutions in Colorado Springs.
"Incentives for landlords to keep rents low. So, figuring out how that needs to be done and done right, because we've seen some legislation come through that was intended to help tenants, and it in fact is probably going to backfire. Landlords are probably going to try and protect themselves, which is actually going to hurt the tenant in the long run," Harris said.
For White, she hopes the time spent sharing a home eventually leads to her family having the money to purchase one.
"I don't see the rents coming down any time soon, my best advice is to save up to buy a house," White said.
Harris did have a word of caution about the data. He said it pulls information from public records and a lot of that is not local, but more general.
Still, he said he does agree with the trend from the report, and the rental increase Colorado Springs has seen is huge.
