Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent increased by 0.4% in June, and now stands at $1,385. This marks the fifth straight monthly increase, with the market now in the midst of the busy summer moving season.
• Rent prices nationally are down 1.2% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has now ticked up for two straight months, after bottoming out in April at the lowest level that we’ve seen in our estimates going back to 2017. The national median rent has now fallen from its 2022 peak by a total of 4%.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate currently stands at 7.2%; after hitting a new record in February, the vacancy rate is now decreasing for the first time in over four years.
• Units are taking an average of 30 days to get leased after being listed, which is down from 31 days last month, but still three days longer than at this time last year.
• The San Antonio, TX metro continues now has the softest conditions among the nation’s large rental markets, with the median rent there down by 5.0% over the past year. At the other end of the spectrum, the San Francisco metro now sits atop our rankings of fastest year-over-year rent growth at +7.4%.

Rents up 0.4% month-over-month, down 1.2% year-over-year

The national median rent ticked up by 0.4 percent in June, increasing for the fifth consecutive month. We are now in the middle of the peak summer moving season, and as such, we’ll likely see prices continue to increase for another month or two, before the fall cooldown begins. This trend is in line with typical seasonal patterns – prices generally increase in the spring and summer when most moves take place, and then soften in the fall and winter as moving activity slows.

The broad contours of this seasonal pattern are a dependable trend, but in recent years we’ve seen sharper winter dips and more modest summer bumps as the market has gone through a soft spell amid a wave of new multifamily construction. As a result, full year rent growth has been negative for each of the past three years. Currently, the national median rent is 1.2 percent cheaper than it was one year ago. While still negative, year-over-year rent growth has now ticked up for two straight months, after bottoming out at -1.6 percent in April. That April figure matched a record low in our estimates, going back to 2017, as demand stagnated amid a backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty. But we now appear to have hit an inflection point, signalling that the rental market may finally be stabilizing as construction slows and the recent influx of new units gets absorbed.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,385, down $17 compared to June 2025. Prices peaked in mid-2022 after a year and a half of skyrocketing growth. Since then, the nationwide median rent has been gradually drifting down and has fallen from that peak by a total of 4 percent, or $57 per month. Despite the pullback in prices, today’s rent levels remain 21 percent higher than they were at the start of 2021.

Multifamily vacancy ticks down to 7.2%, first decline since 2021

The most important driver behind the soft market conditions that have persisted for over three years has been a historic surge of multifamily construction. The construction boom peaked in 2024, when we saw over 600 thousand new multifamily units hit the market, the most new supply in a single year since 1986. Since then, deliveries of new apartments have slowed considerably, albeit while remaining fairly robust by historic standards. Despite being on the downslope of the construction boom for nearly two years, the market had been struggling to absorb the swell of new inventory. That may finally be changing, as we see multifamily occupancy also hitting an inflection point in tandem with rent growth.

Our national vacancy index – which measures the average vacancy rate of stabilized properties in our marketplace – hit a peak of 7.3 percent in February, marking the highest level since at least 2017, which is when we started tracking occupancy. Since then however, the vacancy rate has been slowly creeping down, and now sits at 7.2 percent. This marks the first time that we have seen a decline in our national vacancy index since late 2021. After bottoming out amid the pandemic era housing frenzy, the vacancy rate gradually loosened from record lows to record highs, but it appears to have finally hit its peak.

That said, the recent decline has been modest, and the vacancy rate remains elevated above its long-run average. And with mixed news on the labor market combined with renewed inflation concerns, question marks around housing demand remain in play. Assuming that the vacancy continues to tighten, the change is likely to be slow and gradual.

List-to-Lease time remains elevated at 30 days

As more vacant units have come onto the market, those units have also been sitting vacant for longer. Our “time on market” index tells us how long it takes for units to get leased after they are first listed on our platform. This “list-to-lease” time is a highly-seasonal measure, and it ticked down this month, with units turning over more quickly as moving activity picked up. Units leased in June had been sitting on the market for an average of 30 days, down from 31 days in May.

Despite the month-over-month decline, list-to-lease time remains somewhat elevated. This month’s reading is the longest that we’ve seen in any June going back to 2019 when our tracking begins (January’s 41 days set the overall record). Units are taking three days longer to turn over than at this time last year, and twelve days longer than they were in June 2021 when the market was at its hottest. This lengthened list-to-lease time is a reminder that despite the recent inflection points in pricing and occupancy, rental market conditions remain decidedly cool.

Rent declines are mostly concentrated in Sun Belt markets

There are 56 large metropolitan areas across the country that have a population over one million. In June, rents increased month-over-month in 51 of these markets, but rents remain down year-over-year in 30 of them. Rent trends vary significantly by region, with annual declines currently concentrated primarily in the South and Mountain West regions. Meanwhile, many markets in the Northeast, Midwest, and parts of the West Coast continue to see prices trend up.

[San Antonio] (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/tx/san-antonio) is currently logging the nation’s sharpest year-over-year rent decline among large metros, with the metro-wide median rent there down 5 percent in the last 12 months. San Antonio claims that distinction for the first time this month, taking it from nearby Austin, which had consistently been seeing the biggest rent declines as it added new apartments at the fastest pace of any major housing market in the county. Austin still ranks third (-4.3 percent year-over-year), but price declines there have been moderating somewhat, indicating that the market at the epicenter of the construction boom is mirroring the inflection point seen in our national data. Still, the markets that have built fastest continue to see meaningful price declines, demonstrating the the impact of new supply on softening rents (in addition to San Antonio and Austin, see e.g. Denver, Phoenix, Tampa, and Nashville). Notably almost all of these markets are located in the Sun Belt.

At the other end of the spectrum, the two Bay Area metros – San Francisco and San Jose are currently logging the nation’s fastest year-over-year rent growth at +7.4 percent and +6.1 percent, respectively, as the AI boom has created a wave of high-paying tech jobs there. A number of midwest markets (e.g. Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis) have also been maintaining steady positive rent growth amid soft national conditions, with the region’s relative affordability propping up demand.

Conclusion

As the rental market moves through its busy summer leasing season, we are seeing signs that the tide may be turning on the soft conditions that have defined the market over the past three-plus years. Year-over-year rent growth is ticking up, the vacancy rate is ticking down, and list-to-lease times have gotten shorter. But despite the modest tightening of recent months, multifamily conditions remain notably cool overall, and an uncertain macroeconomic outlook presents risks to rental demand. The coming months will provide more clarity on whether the market is simply plateauing or truly turning the corner to meaningfully tighter conditions.

Complete Data and Methodology

All of the underlying data presented in this report is freely available on our rental data download page, where you can find the full monthly history of our rent estimates, vacancy index, and time on market index at various geographic levels (national, state, metro, county, and city).

Apartment List has long been committed to making our data products as accurate and transparent as possible. For those interested in getting deeper in the technical weeds, please see our rent estimate methodology explainer and vacancy index methodology explainer. And if you have any questions or custom data requests, you can reach us at research@apartmentlist.com.