The Trulia Price Monitor and the Trulia Rent Monitor are the earliest leading indicators of how asking prices and rents are trending nationally and locally. They adjust for the changing mix of listed homes and therefore show what’s really happening to asking prices and rents. Because asking prices lead sales prices by approximately two or more months, the Monitors reveal trends before other price indexes do. With that, here’s the scoop on where prices and rents are headed.

Prices Up 7.2% Year-over-Year, Rising in 91 of 100 Largest Metros
In March, asking home prices rose 1.1% month-over-month, seasonally adjusted. That’s an annualized growth rate of 14%. Quarter-over-quarter, prices are up 3.5%, seasonally adjusted. Year-over-year, prices are up 7.2% nationally and are higher than one year ago in 91 of the 100 largest metros.

Single-Family Rents Stagnate as Investors Create More Supply
Rents, however, rose just 2.4% year-over-year – the smallest increase since the Trulia Rent Monitor started tracking rents one year ago. Let’s look at the trends separately for single-family homes and homes in multi-unit buildings. Rents are rising only on apartments, now at 2.9% year-over-year; single-family home rents have essentially flattened, rising just 0.1%.

Why have rents stopped rising on single-family homes? More supply. Investors have purchased single-family homes – including manyforeclosures – and are renting them out. In fact, the number of single-family rentals nationally has increased by almost one third since the housing market last peaked: that’s nearly 4 million more single-family homes rented in 2012 than in 2005.

In some markets where investors are especially active in buying and renting out single-family homes, rents are actually falling year-over-year, including in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Las Vegas. In two other key investor markets – Atlanta and Phoenix – single-family home rents rose less than 1% year-over-year. Even where single-family home rents are rising most, like Tampa, Dallas, and several other Florida and Texas metros, single-family prices are rising faster. In all of the largest single-family-home rental markets, prices are rising faster than rents – and in many, it’s by a wide margin.

Las Vegas Overtakes Phoenix in Price Gains
Move over, Phoenix: Las Vegas home prices (all homes, including both single-family and condo) are now the fastest-rising in the country. Although prices bottomed more recently in Las Vegas (Feb 2012 – same as when prices bottomed nationally) than in Phoenix(April 2011), prices are now up 26.4% year-over-year in Sin City. Three northern California metros – Oakland, Sacramento, and San Jose – round out the top five. Nine of the top 10 metros for asking-price gains are in the West.