Unpopular opinion: that viral 'average rent dropped 5%' stat is cherry-picked garbage

I dug into the data last week after seeing it shared everywhere. Turns out they only looked at luxury units in five cities where inventory spiked, leaving out 90% of the market. Has anyone else checked the source on these headlines?

3 comments

3 Comments

wren_mitchell4d ago

Did they adjust for square footage or just look at the raw rent numbers? Because a 5% drop in a luxury unit that went from $4,000 to $3,800 is basically meaningless when you're talking about $1,200 studios in older buildings that went up 8% in the same timeframe. How exactly did they define that "market" they were measuring against?

samrodriguez4d ago

This is just like how grocery stores advertise "prices dropping" on a few items while quietly shrinking package sizes on everything else. Gotta look past the headlines and check what they're actually measuring.

barbara_jenkins664d ago

Wait, aren't package sizes regulated pretty strictly though? I mean they can't just quietly shrink things without listing the new net weight on the label.