United States of America eSeries: Rent deals are over 🏡

Rent deals are over 🏡

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Tonight: The latest installment of 'WTF why is housing so expensive?' Plus: thicc bears. Happy weekend. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

📈 RENT: THE REVENGE

Last year, renters caught a rare, bittersweet break. The pandemic was pushing people who could afford to buy homes out to the suburbs, leaving landlords in the city with an urgent need for tenants. For once, we lowly renters seemed to have the upper hand…

Yeah, that's all over now.

Rents are now rising much faster than before the pandemic. In just the last nine months, the national median rent has increased by more than 16%, according to a report from Apartment List. For context: a more typical increase would be about 3.5%, based on records from 2017 to 2019.

Here are some highlights:

The national median rent stands at $1,302, according to the report.
The city with the biggest pandemic-era rent hike: Boise, Idaho. Go figure! Since March of 2020, rent in Boise has gone up 40%. Yowza.
Rents are climbing fastest in Sun Belt cities like Phoenix, where rent for a one-bedroom apartment was up 22% year-over-year in September, according to Zumper.
The median rent in Manhattan was $3,255 in August. That's up 1.5% from July, but still 3.2% below last year.
In San Francisco, the other stupidly expensive market, rents aren't climbing quite as fast as they are New York, partly because the tech industry is generally a lot more chill about remote work than your typical Manhattan corporate behemoth.

BOTTOM LINE

The pandemic upended real estate on so many levels that it's hard to predict where prices are going. But as people come back to cities for work and school, prices will keep climbing. Another force keeping rents high: Would-be homeowners are getting exhausted of the real estate rat race and deciding to rent longer to save money and ride out the current buying wave.

The good news is the rent surge may be ending, though it won't feel like much of a relief for renters. Boise's rent, for example, fell ever so slightly, 0.1%, in September, a sign the market is stabilizing.

#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY

$399,000

Here's a property listing giving literal meaning to the phrase "this housing market is on fire." A house outside of Boston was badly damaged in a fire in August. It's now on the market "as is" — charred wood, broken windows, soot and all —for a whopping $399,000. That's how tight housing inventory is.

💸 SEPTEMBER SCARIES

Welp, it looks like the Wall Street lore of the September Effect is real.

On Thursday, the last trading session of the quarter, Wall Street went into reverse around midday. The tumbled nearly 550 points, or 1.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 1.2%. The Nasdaq fell 0.4%

September is traditionally the worst month of the year for stocks, and boy did this one deliver. It was the worst month for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq since the start of the pandemic.

The September Effect, or September Scaries, as I call it, is widely seen as an anomaly, but it's not hard to see why sentiment took a dive at the end of the summer. There's the very scary Delta variant, stubbornly high inflation and a global supply chain crisis. Oh, also the looming threat of financial ruin from the US government defaulting its debts and uncertainty over the fate of China's overleveraged property giant Evergrande.

Of course, the S&P 500 is still up 16% for the year, so September may well turn out to be a blip. Like the rest of us, investors are feeling uncertain about the what the fourth quarter has in store, and that's got them on a knife's edge. CNN Business' Anneken Tappe has more.

RELATED: In the third quarter, 94 IPOs in the United States raised $27 billion — the best July-to-September period by deal count since 2000.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

It's like a cult. I really felt like I would be nothing without them because they had given me so many great opportunities and that I would let them down severely if I ever quit.

— Eva Rodriguez, 24, former Ozy Media staffer

Former employees at Ozy Media, the buzzy digital startup that's come under scrutiny recently, are speaking out about what they describe as an abusive work environment marked by 18-hour days, weekend meetings and outright bullying by senior leaders, CNN Business' Kerry Flynn writes.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

💰 Congress passed a stopgap funding bill on Thursday to avert a government at shutdown by extending funding through December 3.

🏭 Factories in China are struggling at a time when the world's second largest economy has to contend with yet another concern: a growing power supply crunch.

🛍️ Macy's is suing to block an Amazon ad on the billboard next to its flagship store in Manhattan.

📉 Bed, Bath and Beyond shares tumbled more than 20% Thursday after the retailer revealed that foot traffic "slowed significantly" in August, pummeling its second-quarter earnings.

🐦 TWEET OF THE DAY

It's Fat Bear Week, which, for the uninitiated, is when Alaska's Katmai National Park conducts a March Madness-style tournament for bears that have been chonking up on salmon since the spring. I mean, just look at these thicc beauties!