Over the past year nearly every essential good or service has escalated in price, but for those renting, costs have often skyrocketed.  News site "The Hustle" conducted a survey attempting to gain more insight into how much rent has gone up over the past year and why. Their findings: a whopping 71% of renters experienced rent hikes last year with an average increase of 14.6%.  In certain hot spots, such as Miami, San Diego, and Austin, average rent was up more than 25%!  As for why, the survey found a very interesting relationship: the probability of a rent increase was highly correlated with the size of the landlord. Just 57% of Mom-and-Pop landlords (fewer than 5 rental units) raised rent over the past year. In contrast, over 85% of respondents reported rent hikes if their landlord was a conglomerate (greater than 10,000 units). (Data and chart from thehustle.com.)

For more information, you can contact Womack at greg@womackadvisers.com or call (405) 340-1717.

(Sources: All index- and returns-data from Yahoo Finance; news from Reuters, Barron's, Wall St. Journal, Bloomberg.com, ft.com, guggenheimpartners.com, zerohedge.com, ritholtz.com, markit.com, financialpost.com, Eurostat,0020Statistics Canada, Yahoo! Finance, stocksandnews.com, marketwatch.com, wantchinatimes.com, BBC, 361capital.com, pensionpartners.com, cnbc.com, FactSet.)