The threads that I’ve noticed recently where people have talked about rent increases all mentioned increases under 10% in the last year.
Since true inflation is running at 9-10% (at least) these increases are just keeping up with inflation.
One person mentioned a 25% increase when his lease came up for renewal. Accepting such an increase would be less than intelligent IMO – the landlord is just trying to stop or reduce his negative cashflow and if his tenant accepts the increase he wins – more likely is that his tenant moves out and the rental unit lingers on the market as sdcellar is saying.
A landlord walks a fine line when trying to raise rents. Most tenants will accept a small increase because of the hassle of moving but there is a threshold where the rent increase will cause the tenant to move. In my experience, ANY increase in rent causes friction between landlord and tenant since most tenants assume that the landlord is already getting rich at the tenant’s expense. I never increased rents in my units unless the tenant did something to piss me off – at that point, it didn’t matter to me whether they moved or not because they had demonstrated that they weren’t good tenants.
