• Linda Lara, 72, was pushed out of her apartment of 30 years after a significant rent hike.
• She was able to move to a subsidized apartment in senior housing, which she calls a "miracle."
• But despite working part-time and receiving Social Security, Lara struggles with limited savings.

Linda Lara always wanted to become a homeowner. But being a single mother, taking care of her elderly parents, and helping raise her three granddaughters made it impossible to ever cobble together enough for a downpayment.

Nearly six years ago, Lara was lucky enough to get off the waitlist at a subsidized senior housing development in San Mateo, California, the city 30 minutes south of San Francisco that she's called home for decades. Despite her below-market-rate rent, Lara still has to work 20 hours a week to supplement her Social Security checks and pay her bills. Like many older Americans BI has spoken with, Lara doesn't think she'll ever be able to retire.

When Lara's daughter was 12 years old, they moved into a one-bedroom apartment in San Mateo that Lara ended up calling home for almost 30 years. They loved the neighborhood, the old apartment's "charming" features, and, most importantly, the affordable rent. Lara never wanted to leave.

"It had hardwood floors, arches, it had an old Wedgewood stove. It had French doors that went out to a patio," Lara told BI. "It was a really sweet little apartment."

But in 2019, the apartment building was sold. The new owners informed Lara they were more than doubling her rent, which she couldn't afford.

Luckily, Lara had entered herself into several lotteries for low-income senior apartments a few years earlier. Just as she faced being forced out of her home, she was informed she'd been selected for a 380-square-foot studio apartment in a subsidized building catering to older residents just a couple blocks away from her long-time home. She seized the opportunity and quickly moved in, relieved to pay less than $800 a month in rent.

"It was like a miracle, a gift from heaven that presented itself right when I needed it," Lara said.

But the rent rises every year. It's now about $1,000 a month. Lara works part-time as an office administrator for the county parks department, which pays her about $2,170 a month, and she collects $1,547 in monthly Social Security. Her Social Security payments are less than they otherwise would be because she took the benefit early, at 62, when she stopped working full-time to help take care of her granddaughters.

Lara worries that if she loses her job or is no longer able to work, she won't be able to afford even her subsidized home. With very little in savings, retirement is out of the question.

"I'll be working probably until I die," she said. "Unless I move somewhere far away that's much less expensive."

Are you struggling to afford your housing costs, or unable to find suitable housing to age in? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

Scarce retirement housing

Lara is far from alone. One in five Americans 50 or older say they have no retirement savings, and more than half are concerned they don't have enough saved to last them through the end of their life, an AARP survey found last year.

Housing is a big part of the problem. Many baby boomers are struggling to find affordable and accessible homes to age in. Even those who own their home and have seen their home equity soar in recent years are having trouble finding smaller homes to downsize to.

A record number of homeowners 65 and older — about one-third of older households —are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities, a 2023 Harvard report found. This is particularly difficult for those on fixed incomes. As a result, older people are increasingly facing homelessness. Single adults 50 or older are now estimated to account for about half of the US homeless population, up from about 10% three decades ago.

Lara doesn't want to move far away. She has deep roots in her community, and her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughters live nearby. She said she didn't fear being pushed out of San Mateo or the Bay Area when she was raising her daughter. But these days, she said, it feels like nothing is affordable.

"Apartment prices are out of control," she said. "I have to stay in this apartment until I probably can't afford this anymore, and then I don't know what I'll do."

• Anna Cooper, 32, worked in property management for two years after college.
• She's used her negotiation skills to bring down her rent and parking fees.
• Cooper shared four insider tips to successfully negotiate with your landlord.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anna Cooper, 32, who worked as a resident services coordinator. Business Insider has verified Cooper's employment history. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

From 2018 to 2020, I worked as a resident services coordinator for a luxury multi-family property in Washington DC and learned a lot about the rental process from the landlord side of things.

The pandemic made people more sensitive about their finances, and as a result, many became more proactive about negotiating their rent. It was great to see rent negotiations firsthand because before then, I didn't even know that was something you could do.

I've since moved on from working in property management, but I've used the tips I learned from the job to negotiate my own rent.

Understand the leverage you have

Many people don't think they have the option to negotiate, but you can definitely make your renting experience work in your favor.

When you think about it from the landlord perspective, it's important for them to retain you as a tenant. It's really expensive to turn a unit over. They have to push out marketing to let the public know, "Hey, these units are now up for lease," and there are different companies that they use and have to pay for to put a unit back on the market.

Once you take that into account, you realize you can negotiate to stay and lock in another lease. That way, the landlord doesn't have to worry about a unit sitting vacant for X amount of months or a year when they could continue to bring in profit just by negotiating with someone to resign.

Line up your negotiation chips early

You want to start doing your research 60 to 90 days before your lease renewal date. If you start thinking about the renewal process a few months ahead of time, you can get a better idea of the rental market.

Are there better properties with cheaper rates? What's my experience at the building I'm in right now? Could it be better? These are all good questions to ask yourself.

It's also important to keep track of your experience on the current lease because these could become negotiating chips. Maybe you've had a lot of service requests and maintenance orders for things that are no fault of your own. For example, maybe you have a washer and dryer that has just not been great. Maybe there's a new building across the street, but you were told you would be living across from an empty lot, and the construction has impacted your peace of mind. Keep note of things that have impacted your quality of living, and be prepared to bring them up in your negotiations.

People don't often consider starting early. They'll wait for a letter or an email from their property manager to start the lease renewal process, but by that point, they've lost the edge on time.

Don't be discouraged by a 'no'

Sometimes, when you send a letter or email to your landlord to negotiate, you get told "no."

It sucks, but if that happens, be prepared to ask them again. Check to see if there's someone above your landlord, like the regional property manager. Everyone answers to something above them if it's a larger property. For mom-and-pop landlords, you may have less leverage.

It also doesn't hurt to ask your neighbors what they're paying for rent, if they negotiated, and if they've experienced any issues living in the building. Getting more information can help you negotiate with your landlord more effectively.

Negotiate different amenities, and keep a paper trail

When I moved to LA, I created an Excel spreadsheet of all of the properties I toured. I tracked things like the rent, the square footage of the unit, what amenities were included, parking, and other important details.

After I went on these tours, I compared each of them to see what made the most sense.

If some properties were a couple of blocks away or within a mile of another one, I would open up negotiations with the property manager and say something like, "It's between this apartment and another one. This one has a bit more square footage, but this one here is charging a bit more for parking."

When it came to signing a lease, I spoke to the leasing agent who gave me the tour.

Anytime you're negotiating something like this, you want to have that trail in writing. I sent a follow-up email to the leasing agent saying, "Hey, thank you so much for the tour. As discussed earlier today, I would love if we could look into potential options for a longer lease term, plus a parking credit."

He replied back to the email saying that he would loop in his regional manager. In the end, instead of signing a 12-month lease term, I negotiated a 13-month lease term that made my rent cheaper and included a discounted rate on parking.

• US apartment prices are near all-time highs before the busy moving season begins.
• Consumers are bracing for higher inflation this year, and they may be right.
• A real-estate veteran shared why rent may reach record highs in the coming months.

Renters who are thinking about moving this year may want to strike before they're priced out.

Although apartment prices have drifted downward in recent months, there's reason to suspect that they'll accelerate to record highs during the bustling spring and summer seasons.

A one-bedroom unit in the 100 largest US cities went for $1,524 in March, according to a recent report from real-estate site Zumper. That's almost identical to February when it was $1,525, and the median cost of a two-bedroom setup was unchanged at $1,905.

However, each of those rent figures is up considerably from this time last year. One-bedroom places are 2.5% more expensive, while two-bedroom fixtures are up 3.1% versus last March.

Rent is rising alongside inflation expectations. Consumers surveyed in March were anxious and said they thought prices would increase 6.2% in the next 12 months, up from 5.8% last month, according to The Conference Board's new consumer confidence report.

As rental demand picks up in the warmer weather, real-estate analysts say rent could surge.

"It feels like the calm before the storm," Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades said in the report.

Record rent may kick-start inflation

In many parts of the US, the metaphorical tempest is already in full force.

Apartments got more expensive in 59 of the 100 cities tracked by Zumper, including 17 markets where prices rose at a double-digit rate. Units in major metropolitan areas are right around record highs, even during a seasonally quiet stretch.

San Francisco apartments soared 10.3% to $3,200 — its highest mark in nearly five years. And New York City units rose 6.4% from last March to within $30 of their all-time high, Zumper noted.

Jonathan Miller, the cofounder of New York-based real-estate firm Miller Samuel, recently said his research shows that median rents in the Big Apple have never been higher. Apartment costs steadily rose from October through February — long after the peak season of July and August.

Unless there's a recession, which some economists say is increasingly a risk, this may continue.

"If a record was set in February before the market really gets going — barring any change in the state of the economy — we could very well see new records being set quite a few more times this year," Miller told Business Insider.

Although that observation is primarily about the New York market, Miller said it could apply to the rest of the US as well, with the possible exception of the supply-dense Sun Belt region.

Apartment inventory soared to a 50-year high last summer, especially in warmer areas that became popular during the pandemic. But these supply increases may have gone too far, Miller said, as rents are now tumbling in places like North Carolina and Texas.

"Within the Sun Belt, it seems very unlikely because of overbuilding and oversupply," Miller said of rent records. "Outside of the Sun Belt, there's definitely potential for record or near-record prices, but it's really a local phenomenon."

The rental market is prone to the boom-bust cycle that commodities experience, so if apartment supply rises too much and brings down prices in the Sun Belt, builders will pull back. Indeed, Zumper noted that construction permits for new multi-family units are plunging right now.

In the meantime, renters may have plenty of options in the Sun Belt, but apartment availability elsewhere may be more limited. Limited supply combined with lofty mortgage rates, which take home purchases off the table for many, mean that people may contend with higher rent prices.

"We're looking at weaker economic conditions in 2025 generally, but not a recession," Miller said. "And I just think that, even with a weak economy, there's still a potential for higher prices."

More expensive apartments could fuel inflation, and vice versa. Zumper researchers noted that the shelter component of the consumer price index lags their firm's monthly rental data, which could mean that the consumers expecting inflation to reaccelerate may be right.

"The continued rise in annual rent growth across the national rent index signals potential inflationary challenges for the Federal Reserve as it considers future rate cuts," the note read.

• Skyrocketing home costs have made it harder for Americans to live where they want.
• New laws in some states allow denser housing, enabling friends and families to live closer together.
• New companies are cropping up to respond to the demand for affordable, community-focused housing.

Phil Levin got an idea that would later inspire his next business venture when he and his wife, Kristen Berman, decided to move out of their San Francisco group home to have more space for kids.

One big hangup was that the real estate founder and behavioral scientist couple didn't want to leave the friends with whom they shared their lives.

Suspecting others felt the same, they founded a compound in Oakland, California, named Radish, where they live with about 20 adults and several babies in a variety of houses and apartments on a one-third-acre lot. They share an outdoor space, hot tub, trailer for guests, and a few communal indoor spaces. The friends watch each other's kids, cook together, and just hang out.

That personal experiment inspired Levin to start a company called Live Near Friends, which helps clients who want to live closer to family and friends find suitable real estate, such as a duplex or a lot that can house multiple small homes.

Levin is convinced that having a support network within a five-minute walk is the key to a happy life.

It might also be the key to more affordable housing. States and cities nationwide have legalized so-called "missing middle housing," which includes duplexes, townhomes, small apartment buildings, backyard tiny homes, and converted garages, creating a business opportunity for entrepreneurs like Levin.

These diverse housing types offer cheaper options and more housing diversity — and they're more conducive to communal living than the detached single-family homes on large lots that dominate the American urban landscape. This can help urban dwellers stay in their neighborhoods rather than being priced out of the city to isolating suburban subdivisions.

"We're sort of opening up these new categories and types of real estate for people and trying to show them how they apply them to their own fantasy of living near friends and family," said Levin, who previously co-founded a car-free real estate development company called Culdesac. He connects his clients with real estate agents, developers, and architects, who can bring their vision to fruition.

Levin says he wants to show developers and city planners that there's growing demand for more community-oriented, medium-density housing. He compares his business model to Airbnb, which has aggregated and juiced the demand for short-term rentals and reshaped housing markets around the world.

"We want the people that build real estate and actually determine the physical form of our built environments" to think of housing and neighborhoods "as a web of social connection, rather than just a bunch of isolated, atomic housing units," he said.

A family in Fremont, California, is taking advantage of the new state laws to keep their multigenerational household together. Anjan, a Silicon Valley software engineer, wanted his parents as close as possible, so he and his wife are building a second home on the same lot their single-family house sits on so his parents can live steps from their two grandchildren.

Having his parents so close "makes a huge difference in the quality of life," said Anjan, who asked to go by just his first name to protect his privacy. "It really does help having the person close by or live right next to you."

A demand for community-focused housing

Catherine Woodiwiss is evidence of that demand. The 38-year-old design researcher spent her 20s and early 30s living in a series of group houses with fellow creatives and do-gooders in Washington, DC. When she moved to Austin for graduate school, she built her new community around another shared house. It was more affordable to live with housemates, but it was also fun and supportive, she found. She built some of her closest relationships with her housemates and collaborated on projects like activist trainings and music nights.

"I made friends with people I never would have found or made friends with otherwise," she said.

But that came to an abrupt end in 2023 when Woodiwiss' Austin group house disbanded. She wanted to stay in her neighborhood, but there were few affordable options outside of an apartment designed for one.

For the first time, Woodiwiss moved into her own place — a smaller apartment in a large building. There are perks of living alone that she's since grown to appreciate, chiefly the time, energy, and "headspace" she's reclaimed. But 18 months in, she still doesn't know the names of anyone in her building, as she said her new neighbors keep to themselves and the building lacks spaces that could foster casual social interactions.

Recently, Woodiwiss visited friends who live at Radish. The community offers the kind of casual, but structured connection she craves.

"I'm both really happy with where I am and can feel that there is a level of commitment and a level of intentional community or intentional collective living that I still really long for," she said.

Legalizing missing middle housing

In recent years, California has loosened zoning restrictions to facilitate more infill housing across the state as part of its effort to address soaring home prices and rents caused by a housing shortage.

Some real estate companies and developers are already responding to the demand — and the changing laws. The Oakland-based firm BuildCasa was founded in 2022 in response to a California law making it easier to subdivide lots and build additional homes on them. The company works with homeowners — including Anjan — who want to split or purchase lots, and with developers who want to build starter homes and other infill housing.

The houses and condos built on properties like Anjan's tend to be between 800 and 1,200 square feet and sell for between 30 and 40% less than the average single-family home in the same neighborhood, said BuildCasa's co-founder and CEO, Ben Bear.

BuildCasa co-founder and architect Paul Steidl grew up in an old mixed-use neighborhood of townhomes in Pittsburgh that he says informs his support for missing middle housing. "When I was younger, when my parents were both working, I could go over to a neighbor's house right next door, or be able to walk down the street to the corner store," Steidl said. "That's an important aspect of my upbringing that I realized growing up wasn't really common for a lot of people that grew up in the US."

Bear and Steidl said they've seen growing demand from developers and philanthropic organizations, which view infill construction as both a business opportunity and a way to address the housing shortage and affordability crisis.

Greenville, South Carolina, is one of the places expanding more sociable living options. Grant Taleck, a content creator who's made videos about communal living for Live Near Friends, is starting the process of building an ADU in his backyard. The city's recently loosened development code makes this possible.

Taleck realized he wasn't alone in wanting to live near friends when his videos about so-called "cottage courts" — clusters of starter homes — and how Americans love the college experience because campuses are walkable communities went viral. The Florida native has already convinced his mother and one of his best friends to move to Greenville, selling them on the city's plentiful "third spaces," walkability, and mixed-use design. He hopes a friend will move into his ADU.

"It's not that hard to convince people," he said. "Once they visit here, they're like, Okay, I want to be here. It's really special."

Do you live near or with friends or in a communal living arrangement? Or do you aspire to? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected].

• Business Insider spoke with interior designers about how to make an apartment feel more luxurious.
• Choosing a focal point for symmetry can make a room feel more elegant.
• Long curtains and well-placed mirrors are great tools for making a space feel larger.

Making a small apartment feel personalized, cozy, and luxurious can be tricky. Many renters struggle to find ways to make an apartment feel like home without doing major renovations and potentially violating the terms of their lease.

That's why Business Insider asked interior designers for tips on making a rental feel more luxurious without making big changes. Here's what they had to say.

Choosing a focal point to decorate around can make a room feel more elegant.

Decorating around a specific element, like a fireplace or a piece of wall art, can bring symmetry and unity to a room.

According to interior designer Tommy Kebbson of Kebbson & Co., this can instantly make a space feel more elegant.

"Even small adjustments like placing lamps on either side of a sofa or balancing artwork on both sides of a wall can make a significant difference," he said.

Kebbson also told BI that a symmetrical space doesn't mean all elements have to be identical. Lamps and art can be complimentary without matching perfectly to achieve a balanced, cohesive look.

Use curtains to make your ceilings feel higher.

Jennifer Jones, principal designer at Niche Interiors, suggests using curtains to trick the eye into thinking your ceilings are higher than they are.

"Mounting tall drapery panels above windows is an easy way to make your small space feel instantly larger," says Jones. "The trick is to pull your eye upwards, which emphasizes the height of the space and makes the volume seem larger. Drapes also add softness and sophistication to a space."

Mirrors can make an apartment feel bigger and brighter.

Mirrors are a great addition to any room — and not just for touching up makeup or putting an unruly strand of hair back in place.

"A well-placed mirror can reflect natural light and make the space feel much larger and brighter," interior designer Laetitia Laurent of Laure Nell Interiors said.

Laurent told BI she likes to position mirrors opposite windows and in dark corners to draw light to those areas and add a sense of depth to the room.

"In smaller rooms, even a large statement mirror can work wonders, acting as both a functional piece and a design element that enhances the room's overall flow," she said.

Don’t underestimate the power of a rug.

Aside from making cold floors feel more cozy, area rugs can also help add structure to an apartment with an open floor plan.

Kebbson said he uses rugs to subdivide rooms, and finds this method especially helpful when designing a studio apartment.

Interior designer Vicky Floros also emphasized the importance of rugs and said they're good items to splurge on.

"Rugs act as the anchor of a room and can make or break a space," she told BI. "While there are many budget-friendly options available these days, this is one item worth investing in, as it can completely transform the look and feel of your room."

It's wise to choose multifunctional storage pieces and furniture.

When creating a luxurious feel in an apartment, Elissa Hall, lead designer and founder at EDH Interiors, suggests using pieces of furniture that "serve both form and purpose," like a convertible couch or a storage ottoman.

"For a recent project, I included a custom-built shelving system that acted as a room divider, offering storage and space definition without sacrificing the open atmosphere," Hall said.

• Andre Nader sold his Austin rental due to stress outweighing financial benefits.
• He and his wife, who moved to SF in 2014, have found renting to be more cost-effective than owning.
• Nader says he doesn't need to own real estate to hit his FIRE goals and focuses on index fund investing.

Andre Nader has been both a homeowner and a landlord — and neither are for him, at least at this moment in time.

Shortly after getting married in 2012, he and his wife bought a home in Austin. When they moved to San Francisco in 2014 for a job Nader landed with Facebook, they kept it as a rental rather than selling. Their original plan was to move back to Texas.

Nader decided to self-manage the rental from nearly 2,000 miles away, which he did for a year and a half. When his tenant gave notice to move out and Nader flew back to Austin to deal with the turnover, he was surprised with what he found.

"The place was just kind of trashed," he told Business Insider. "It needed all-new carpet. It needed a lot of work."

While the extra income had been nice — he said the property generated a cash flow of a couple of hundred dollars a month — ultimately, it wasn't worth it.

"The stress and the mental overhead were drastically outweighing any of the short-term financial benefits," said Nader, who decided to sell rather than find a new tenant. Plus, he and his wife, who had started working as a designer at Uber, were enjoying the Bay Area and found themselves pushing out their timeline. "I was never convinced we would stay in San Francisco for the long term, but I became more and more confident that we wouldn't be immediately back to Austin."

Choosing to rent to save on housing in SF and leaning into index fund investing

Nader, 37, has been pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retirement early) since his 20s. He and his wife have always lived below their means, and for years, they kept their expenses low enough so that just one of their tech incomes could cover all of their household expenses, allowing them to invest about half of their combined income.

When they moved to the Bay Area, renting made sense from a budget perspective: It was cheaper for them to rent in the pricey city — and it still is, said Nader: "Right now, San Francisco really favors renting. It's really hard from a pure numbers standpoint to make owning make sense."

There are exceptions, he noted: "Particularly in a place like San Francisco, a lot of the math can change with the appreciation of property values. If housing prices continue to increase, then maybe buying can come out, but if you take conservative approaches to any future increases in housing, renting just ends up making a lot more sense mathematically."

Plus, Nader was never convinced he and his family would stay in San Francisco long enough to make buying worth it.

"The Goldilocks timeline has historically been, five to seven years is when buying starts being more advantageous than renting," he said. "Now when I do the numbers, it's even longer — closer to the 10-year timeframe — and I'd never been confident that I would be in San Francisco that long."

While prudent real estate investing is a viable path to wealth, Nader doesn't believe he needs to own property to hit his financial goals.

His investment strategy revolves around low-cost index funds. He owns various Fidelity and Vanguard index funds, including Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares (VTI) and Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF Shares (VXUS).

Nader describes the strategy as "super boring," but it's effective: It's helped him build a seven-figure net worth, which BI verified by looking at a copy of his investment report.

It's not lost on him that bringing in two tech incomes was a major advantage.

"I won the income game by being in tech, by being a dual-income household. I didn't need to be taking these outsized risks by investing in extremely speculative ways. I could be boring in my portfolio," said Nader, who worked at Meta for nine years before he was affected by the company's 2023 layoffs.

He and his wife had enough between their savings and one tech income that he didn't have to find another job, but he says he'll consider himself "semi-FIRE'd" until his wife also walks away from her job.

Nader, who spends his days writing on Substack and doing one-on-one financial independence coaching, says his investment strategy has remained the same since the layoff. He likes the hands-off approach to index fund investing, especially after experiencing what it's like to own real estate.

When he was managing the Austin rental, "I kind of quickly realized that the promise of real estate being a clearly passive investment, even if you have property managers, wasn't something that, for me, proved to be true, so it further reinforced my view around focusing on super boring, low-fee index funds," he said. "I could have a few hundred thousand dollars in real estate and maybe a million dollars in index funds, but I would be thinking about the real estate three times as much, so it would be a disproportionate amount of mental exercise, at least for me."