Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

What you need to know: The allowable rent increase for the 2023 calendar year is 14.6%.

Oregon’s maximum allowable rent increase is calculated as 7% plus the West Region Consumer Price Index. It is important to keep in mind that the CPI calculation uses a 12 month average, and over the past year this comes out to 7.6%. See our office’s Rent Stabilization page for more, including a downloadable spreadsheet with all the data.

Given the recent bout of inflation the economy is experiencing — the fastest in 40 years — next year’s maximum rent increase follows suit. Here is what our office wrote in our forecast document the other week:

While overall market rents rarely move at the maximum allowable amount, a larger increase likely strains more household budgets. In reality, renters face the options of paying the higher prices, trying to find a more affordable unit in a really tight housing market where vacancy rates are low, or taking on more roommates to spread the higher housing costs across more people.

Looking forward, inflation currently is and will slow. Future maximum rent increases will be lower than 2023’s. Even so, given how high inflation is recently, and the 12 month average calculation, 2024’s figure will likely still be somewhat elevated as inflation will only just then be returning to the Federal Reserve’s target based on current forecasts. Our office will publish the 2024 maximum allowable rent increase a year from now, in mid-September 2023.