Home ownership down, apartment renting up in Baltimore area

With little signs of economic recovery in the area, many Baltimore-area residents are taking their moving boxes to apartments instead of houses, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The newspaper, citing MPF Research, a real estate data firm, reports apartment rental rates increased 6 percent in 2010 to approximately $1,120 per month.

John Cohan, director of marketing for Southern Management, told the paper the "glamour of buying" a home doesn't exist in the current economic climate.

Hessam Nadji, managing director of research and advisory services for Marcus & Millichap, a provider of multifamily real estate investment services, told the paper Baltimore is doing better than cities like San Francisco and New York, where rental rates went up as much as 10 to 15 percent.

According to Trulia, the median home price in Baltimore between September and November of last year was $138,000, down 9.2 percent from the same period in 2009, and home sales prices in the city have depreciated 6.8 percent since 2006.

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