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That's no guarantee either, especially with increasing consolidation of land under larger corporate umbrellas. I recently moved away from Columbus after getting on the bad side of an investment group that seems to own nearly all of the publicly-listed apartments in the area within my price bracket, and are still actively buying up more. Said bracket is fairly low, granted, but it's all I can afford on even a decent full-time income, especially with other expenses spiking as of late. Columbus has recently found itself to be the new largest city and center of economic growth in the state, and changed rapidly and radically over the past couple of decades. As a result, it's nowhere near as seasoned and well-established as many other major metros, and the massive influx of new monied interests into the area quickly cornered their respective markets. Moving back to the Cleveland area, which was quite the boom town a century ago but has infamously been in near-perpetual decline ever since (with many residents, like I had, migrating to Columbus), has much healthier competition in the rental market. Perhaps in a few decades as new assets are built and today's ones slosh around the economy, Columbus will have healthier, more diverse competition and see your point ring true. It's certainly healthy in other sectors—one of my favorite things about living there was the great wealth of hole-in-the-wall bodegas, ethnic grocers, restaurants, and food trucks around me that meant even on my last dime I could always try new cuisines—but at least for those of us for whom even a high five-figure income is a distant dream, options are very limited. |