High rent isn’t something you’ll want to experience in Cities Skylines 2 since it causes your citizens to be unable to live in the houses you build, which ends up weakening your in-game economy as you are forced to pay property tax. While you can’t manually set the rent rates as you see fit, there are a variety of ways you can influence it to fix the constantly “high rent” message that keeps popping up in Cities Skylines 2.
Ways to reduce high rent in Cities Skylines 2
As a rule of thumb, anything that makes your land value go up will simultaneously raise rent. After all, the better the living standards and exclusivity, the more one needs to pay to enjoy those benefits. With that in mind, the following are some noteworthy ways to tackle the problem of high rent and lower it in Cities Skylines II
Reduce the number of services
All services that improve quality of life, such as parks, hospitals, etc. affect rent. The key is to get people to live in the city first and foremost. Filling the land with high-quality services to the point where no one can even afford to live there or take advantage of them in the first place kind of defeats the purpose.
Make it a balancing act where you only build enough services to a reasonable level without causing the Land value and, hence, the rent rate to skyrocket.
Reduce Taxation rate
This is a more drastic approach. Taxation is how you gather your income, and it’s what allows you to go for more construction endeavors. Set it too low, and not only do you risk running out of funds that you can’t push for city expansion or reconstruction, but you might even end up in debt. That said, if you’re looking for a quick method to lower rent rates in Cities Skylines II, this is one way to go about it.
Improve the quality of education
A higher level of education means better job prospects and a higher average salary per citizen. While schools are relatively expensive, they greatly improve your citizens’ buying power and ability to pay off higher rent, so it’s a more long-term solution to counter mounting rent costs as your city becomes more complex.
Demolish unsustainable buildings
In many cases, the increase in rent may be associated with a few outlier buildings/housing complexes. That said, demolishing such buildings is quite drastic and displaces many citizens who previously used them for housing.
So unless you want a potential death wave of displaced people that exacerbates other economic issues, it’s best to have an alternate, affordable housing scheme so you can mitigate the fallout from this decision.
Optimize your land usage
While it may seem neater to dedicate specific zones for High-density, vertical-rise houses and others for low-density houses, going for a balanced approach where you build the two types of buildings in tandem will leave little dead zones and more fully optimized land use. Doing so helps to reduce overall rent and leaves enough space to pursue other ventures.
