US apartment vacancies rose to a record 8% in the fourth quarter and rents fell the most in three decades as unemployment cut demand, according to Reis Inc.

Asking rents dropped 2.3% from a year earlier to an average of $1,026, the biggest decline since Reis began records in 1980, the New York-based research firm said today. Effective rents, what tenants actually paid, decreased 3% to $964.

'Never before have we observed rental properties in so much distress,' Victor Canalog, Reis’s research director, said in a statement. Demand will only recover 'when labor markets stabilize,' he said.

bloomberg.com