[quote=skerzz]I’m hoping for 5%+ annual rent increases for the foreseeable future! I’d love to be in a position to use the cash flow from my SFR rental to cover 100% of my primary residence carrying costs so I can have no net housing costs (mortgage, insurance, taxes, etc.). It’s going to take approximately 15 years of 5% annual rent increases to make that happen, so perhaps I’ll need to look at getting into another rental property to speed this up. Anyone have statistics on the annual rents for SFR properties in SD county over the past 20+ years? I’m thinking 5% is much too aggressive for modeling purposes and 2-3% might be more reasonable.[/quote]

In 2000 average asking rent in San Diego city was about $900/mo. Now it’s almost $1600/mo. In 2010 it was about $1250/mo. So it’s really gone up quite a bit in the last 5 years. From 2000 to 2010 you had about 3% annual increases. From 2000 to 2014 you had close to 4% annual increases.

For rents over the long term you aren’t going to get much more than nominal wage inflation. I suppose if you get big minimum wage increase and it successfully rises all boats instead of having negative unintended consequences then maybe you could expect 5% for awhile.