Rent.com: New Jersey rent prices have increased nearly 35% in the last year

The price of rent has been increasing in New Jersey – up nearly 35% in the last year. This is 10% higher than the national average.
Rent prices in Jersey City – New Jersey’s second-largest city – are increasing at a fast and furious rate.
“I was shocked and immediately decided to go to the landlord and talk about it,” says Aleksei Tikhonov, who has rented in the city for seven years.
Tikhonov was able to bring down a 20% rent increase to about 7%.
A new Rent.com survey states that rent for one-bedroom apartments in Jersey City is up about 50% in the last year. Rent for two-bedroom apartments is up around 40%.
Even people locked into a lease for the next six months are starting to worry.
“I’ve heard a lot of people in our building, they’re saying they’re raising it 20-25%,” says Jersey City resident Felicia Wojtowicz.
This comes amid skyrocketing food and fuel prices.
There does not seem to be a quick fix. The Biden administration hosted the chairman of the Federal Reserve at the White House on Tuesday to plan. They say the strategy will be to raise interest rates in the hope of bringing down costs.
Experts say that most of this can be traced to the COVID-19 pandemic – including the rent increases. Landlords felt the pain as well when they were forced to freeze prices in some cases.
“So then every week that I was looking, they were going up, going up, going up,” says Annette Volpe.
This was about a year ago. Volpe says that she has now started to engage her landlord about the rent. She says an increase of a couple hundred dollars is reasonable. Anything more and it may be a problem.
There is not a statewide law in New Jersey about rent increases. Municipalities can regulate it locally.