Glendale’s housing and rental prices are on the rise along with the rest of the country. According to some experts, there is not much that can be done about it.

Glendale and the entire valley were once low-cost places to live, but now a housing crisis emerges because of the COVID-19 pandemic and low-interest rates for loans. But what is fueling this crisis?

Ryan Bieber, a real estate and former mortgage banker, has worked in Glendale’s housing market for over 10 years.

“In the past two years, [Glendale’s prices are] up 33 percent,” Bieber says.

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Glendale’s median home price was $276,000 in 2019 and now it’s $414,000, a $138,000 difference.

The problem is that there are simply not enough homes for people to buy and move into and the options for renting aren’t much better. For those who rent, the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Glendale is $1,310, a 43 percent increase from last year, according to zumper.com.

Bieber and other agents struggle to find homes for their clients as supply dwindles. Glendale does have several new housing projects in the works, but not on a large and quick enough scale to combat this problem.

New developments do bring in more jobs and increase home values, but at times it seems the companies are the ones benefiting the most from it.

“The new home developments in Glendale have great upsides to the city and community as a whole- increasing jobs, home values, home selection, and providing additional tax revenue,” Bieber says. “It doesn’t stop there, we have seen business owners make more money with new housing developments, so there is more money for local wages and salaries. In my opinion, the current new home construction in Glendale isn’t at a large enough scale to have major impacts socially, economically, or politically. However, I do believe that the largest overlooked giants that are causing major social and economic impacts on real estate in Glendale and surrounding cities are corporations, hedge funds, private equity, and technology companies. These firms have many different investment strategies that have changed and displaced communities within short periods of time and nobody is taking about it.”

Affordability and open spaces are what brought and still bring many people to Glendale. The city has faced some backlash from residents over new housing developments because of their large social and economic impact in the area. 

Bieber says, “Affordability is just definitely, definitely going away.”