Anyone who recently bought the new Cities Skylines 2 and is currently in the process of building their first city will perhaps be greeted by the message “Rents are too high” and ask themselves the question, what can you do about the high rents? How do you get rid of the notice that rents are too high and what exactly is the cause of it? If you are currently facing the same problem, our short guide may be able to help you.
High rent in Cities Skylines 2
If the rents are too high for the residents, this can be due to various reasons. Most of the time it depends on the land value on which the buildings stand and therefore also on the building land value. You can display both values in the corresponding view by pressing the I key in the game and then displaying the land value on the left. Households with higher incomes can also pay higher rents and settle in areas with higher land values. Households with a lower income have to pay more attention to money and settle in areas with a lower land value and tend to live in multi-family houses or “cheap apartments”. However, since the standard value increases over time, because buildings with higher levels also ensure a higher standard land value in the area, the rents also rise and the rent becomes too expensive for households over time.
How can the high rents be reduced?
But what can you do now if the high rent report doesn’t go away? Even if you can’t reduce rents in Cities Skylines 2 directly at the push of a button, there are other options you can use to get the problem under control. On the one hand, as an “immediate response” you can reduce taxes for certain households that are affected by the problem. But that doesn’t help in the long term either, as the land value is likely to continue to increase if nothing is changed about the zones and buildings.
Ultimately, however, there is often no way around changing the zoning and demolishing existing buildings and replacing them with other types of zones or buildings, for example single-family homes or apartments with high-density residential buildings or “cheap rental apartments”. Expanding living space in areas with low land values can also help with problems with high rents. In addition, good education should also be ensured in the areas, as better education also leads to higher salaries in the medium term.
In the current version of Cities Skylines 2, it often happens that messages about high rents are displayed even though the buildings aren’t even standing yet. This is probably a bug that will be fixed in future patches.
