The most expensive rental apartments in the us – welcome to north dakota
Areas with the most expensive rent in the USA. Click for larger version. Photo: ApartmentGuide.com
Picture the most expensive place to rent an apartment in the US. What springs to mind? Probably a light-filled, wooden-floored apartment in a brownstone overlooking New York’s Central Park, or maybe a modern, tastefully furnished palace of an apartment in the buzzing heart of LA.
Neither could be further from the truth. In reality, the most expensive place in the US to rent an apartment is the snow-covered town of Williston, North Dakota. According to the Apartment Guide survey, at the end of 2013 an ‘entry-level apartment’ (around 700 square feet with one bedroom and one bathroom) would set you back an average of $2,394 per month.
Williston may not have world-renowned museums, internationally known landmarks or the finest restaurants in the US, but it does have one thing New York City doesn’t – oil. Huge reserves of oil, in fact, which have led to North Dakota having the lowest unemployment rate (2.6% as at December 2013) in the US. At the heart of the oil boom, Williston has seen its population jump from 14,716 in 2010 to an estimated 33,547 according to the latest figures from North Dakota State University.
Local companies are working round the clock to respond to the huge increase in demand for housing. Award-winning developer North Dakota Developments opened its first Great American Lodge site near Williston in November 2013, following sell-out investment success. The company’s latest site, Great American Lodge Montana, 45 minutes' drive from Williston, has already sold 130 of its 300 units since opening to investors in December 2013.
Robert Gavin,. CEO, North Dakota Developments, comments: “The fact that Williston rentals are the highest in the USA may come as a surprise to many people, but not us. When we visited Williston 2 years ago, most car parks were filled with people sleeping in their cars which is a predictable downside of having tens of thousands of workers and only enough housing for a tiny fraction.
"As with any free market economy, the higher the demand and smaller the supply for a commodity, in this case housing, the higher the price that can be asked of it. Whilst not good news for oil and service workers, it certainly is for North Dakota Developments and our investors who can take advantage of these high rental rates are near 100% occupancies to generate some previously unimaginable rental returns of circa 40% per year.”