This morning, we were forwarded an article, written by Catie Clark with the Idaho Business Review, titled Boise's fast-growing rents still a bargain.  Like many of you, the title got my attention.  I also really liked how she summarized the data, which I used in my own little brief summary below.

Having numbers, what do they tell us? Both studies compared their rents for September 2019 vs. September 2020. Apartment List calculated an annual increase of 5.5% while Advisor Smith calculated 8.6%. Basically, the numbers tell us that rents in Boise went up. This is not a surprise.

The Apartment List rent growth for the nation was only 1.4% for two-bedroom units, so prices are going up in Boise a lot faster than elsewhere.

Compared to median rent for the whole country of $1,106, Boise’s median two-bedroom rent of $1,021 is both good and bad. It’s good that the cost is living is lower here in Boise. It’s bad because all those people, whose states have riots, smoke instead of air, and no jobs want to move to Boise, which seems to be driving rents up even further. And I’d like to add, that it is increasing the cost of housing, not just rents.

Boise made the top-twenty list for fastest growing rents, in the no. 17 slot.  Using the traditional formula of allocating 30% of gross income to housing cost, and assuming total tax burden of 9.3% from Forbes, then a median two-bedroom Boise apartment would require an annual salary of $45,000.