Average Boston rent rises to $1,200 in 2014

Boston’s rent hike is smaller than the increase in 17 other cities.Bill Greene/Globe Staff/File

The average Boston area rent rose 5 percent from 2013, approaching $1,200 this year, according to new estimates from a real estate tracking company.

Although Greater Boston’s rent hike is smaller than the increase in 17 other cities, the rise breaks out to an additional $696 a year for each of the Boston metro area’s 684,000 renting households.

“Over the past fourteen years, rents have grown at twice the pace of income,” said Stan Humphries, the chief economist at Zillow, which conducted the survey. “Next year, we expect rents to rise even faster than home values, meaning that another increase in total rent paid similar to that seen this year isn’t out of the question. In fact, it’s probable.”

Across the entire US, Zillow estimated rental payments would total $441 billion for 2014, up 4.9 percent from 2013. The company used national rental data and historic information for rent changes in individual cities to make its estimates for 2014.

The nation’s hottest real estate markets were in San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., where rents rose more than 11 percent. The New York metropolitan area, which stretches into New Jersey, was the largest market, with an estimated $50 billion paid in rent this year.

The rent is too...well, you know

Boston is the seventh-priciest rental market in the country, unchanged from 2013.

San Jose, CA

$1,807

San Francisco, CA

$1,598

Washington, DC

$1,428

San Diego, CA

$1,362

Los Angeles, CA

$1,308

New York, NY

$1,228

Boston, MA

$1,197

Seattle, WA

$1,154

Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL

$1,127

Riverside, CA

$1,075

Denver, CO

$1,066

Baltimore, MD

$1,047

Sacramento, CA

$1,029

Austin, TX

$1,008

DATA: Zillow

Jack newsham/Globe Correspondent

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Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the size of the increase in rent in the Boston area, in absolute terms and in percentages. It is $696 a year, or a 5 percent increase.