Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent fell 0.8% in December, and now stands at $1,356. This closes the book on 2025, with five consecutive months of rent declines. Based on recent years, we expect another 1-2 months of rent drops before the market turns a corner in early Spring.
• Rent prices nationally are down 1.3% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has been slightly negative for more than two full years, and the national median rent has now fallen from its 2022 peak by a total of 5.9%.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate ran up to 7.3% this month, a record high for our index that started in 2017. We're past the peak of a multifamily construction surge, but a healthy supply of new units are still hitting the market and colliding with sluggish demand, causing vacancies to continue trending up.
• Units are taking an average of 39 days to get leased after being listed, which is three days longer than one year ago and represents another record high back to 2019.
• The Austin, TX metro continues to have the softest conditions among the nation’s large rental markets, with the median rent there down by 6.6% over the past year. At the other end of the spectrum, the Providence, RI metro remains atop our rankings of fastest year-over-year rent growth at +5.6%.

Rents down 0.8% month-over-month, down 1.3% year-over-year

The national median rent dipped by 0.8 percent in December, closing the year with five straight months of rent decline. November provided the steepest drop, and over the next few months the market should creep back and reach positive rent growth in February or March. This is in line with typical seasonal patterns – prices soften as fewer renters move during the winter – but has been exacerbated in the last three years by rapid multifamily construction (more on that below).

In addition to steeper winter declines since 2022, we have also observed a shift in the timing of rental market seasonality. Whereas May used to be peak rent growth, over the past three years March has been the hottest month, with rent growth trending down during what was, prior to the pandemic, the peak moving months. The flip to negative rent growth now arrives in August, whereas it used to arrive in September.

December’s rent decline (-0.8 percent) was a bit steeper than last year’s (-0.6 percent), and so we observe a drop in year-over-year rent growth to -1.3 percent. Earlier in 2025, it appears that annual rent growth was on track to flip positive for the first time since mid-2023; however, that rebound stalled out and reversed course during a particularly slow summer season.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,356, down $18 compared to December 2024. Median prices demonstrate clearly the seasonal nature of the rental market, as they rise and fall during each calendar year, but have been on a steady downward trajectory since the market’s mid-2022 peak. By the end of 2025, the nationwide median rent has fallen 5.9 percent below that peak, or $86 per month. However, this comes after a period of record-setting rent inflation in 2021-2022, so today’s rent levels remain 19 percent higher than they were at the end of 2020.

Multifamily vacancy rate hits 7.3%, a new peak

The most important driver behind the soft market conditions that have persisted for three years is a historic surge of multifamily construction. 2024 saw over 600 thousand new multifamily units hit the market, the most new supply in a single year since 1986. Today, we’re past the peak of that supply wave, but multifamily construction remains elevated. 243 thousand multifamily units were completed in the first half of this year – that’s down 27 percent from the second half of 2024, but still 31 percent higher than the 10-year average for first half completions. Similarly, the number of units still under construction has fallen considerably from its peak but remains solidly above the long run average, indicating that we’re not quite through with the supply boom.

As a result of all this new inventory, more vacant units are sitting on the market, meaning that property owners face more competition for renters and have less pricing leverage. Our national vacancy index – which measures the average vacancy rate of stabilized properties in our marketplace – sits at 7.3 to close out 2025. This represents the highest level since at least 2017, which is when we started tracking occupancy. As the supply wave continues to recede, these occupancy and pricing trends should begin to gradually shift, but for now the market is still absorbing a swell of new units. At the same time, a shaky labor market seems to be putting a damper on housing demand, another factor contributing to sluggish rental market conditions persisting longer than we anticipated at the outset of this year.

List-to-Lease time also reaches a new peak: 39 days

As more vacant units have come onto the market, those units have also been sitting vacant for somewhat 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 reached a new peak of 38.7 days in December 2025, eclipsing the previous high set one year ago.

This increase in list-to-lease time is in line with rent growth turning negative and a general off-season cooling of the rental market. Time on market is up more than three full days compared to last December, and more than twice as long as it was in summer 2021, when the average unit was turning over in just 18 days.

Rent declines are mostly concentrated in Sun Belt markets

There are 54 large metropolitan areas across the country that have a population over one million. After a slow December, rents declined month-over-month in 51 of these markets, and rents are down year-over-year in 33. 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 despite the winter slowdown.

Austin has seen the nation’s sharpest decline among large metros – the metro-wide median rent there has fallen 6.6 percent in the last 12 months and is down more than 20% from its 2022 peak. The Austin metro is also significant for permitting new homes at the fastest pace of any large metro in the country, indicating the impact of new supply on softening rents. Austin is not alone in exhibiting this trend; among the ten metros with the sharpest year-over-year rent declines, many also rank among the highest in terms of multifamily permits (e.g. Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, and Orlando). Notably almost all of these markets are located in the Sun Belt.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Providence, RI metro remains in the top spot for fastest rent growth, with prices there up 5.6% over the past year. Rapid rent growth is nothing new in Providence, as the area has experienced a sharp influx of demand over the past five years, owing to its status as a more affordable alternative to nearby Boston. But that affordability advantage is rapidly waning – the median rent in Providence is now over 40 percent higher than it was in early 2020, the most significant increase over that period among large metros. As remote and hybrid work arrangements allow more workers to relocate further from the office, it seems that the affordability woes of some expensive markets are expanding outward.

Conclusion

As we close the door on 2025, our key market indicators tell the story of a third consecutive slow year for the multifamily industry. This year rent prices continued their downward trend while vacancies and time-on-market reached new highs. Forward-looking data suggest this sluggishness will persist into the first half 2026, as we continue to work through a backlog of new construction. Much will depend on rental demand, whose outlook is shaky given weakness in the labor market and general economic uncertainty. If demand worsens, it will take longer for the market to metabolize the recent growth in the rent stock, even if the construction industry slows in tandem.

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.