Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent dipped by 0.4% in September, and now stands at $1,394. This was the second consecutive month-over-month decline, as we’ve now entered the rental market’s off-season. It’s likely that we’ll continue to see further modest rent declines through the remainder of the year.
• Rent prices nationally are down 0.8% compared to one year ago. After gradually dipping further negative for five straight months, year-over-year growth ticked up slightly this month.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate now sits at 7.1%, a record high for our index. We're past the peak of a multifamily construction surge, but a healthy supply of new units are still hitting the market, and vacancies are still trending up.
• Units are taking an average of 31 days to get leased after being listed, up two days from last month’s reading, and one day longer than at this time last year.
• The Austin metro currently has the softest conditions among the nation’s large rental markets, with the median rent there down by 6.5% over the past year. At the other end of the spectrum, the San Francisco metro has seen the fastest year-over-year rent growth (+4.9%).

Rents down 0.4% month-over-month, down 0.8% year-over-year

The national median rent dipped by 0.4 percent in September, marking the second straight monthly decline. We’re now officially into the rental market’s slow season. It’s likely that rent prices nationally will continue to decline through the remainder of the year, with fewer renters looking to move as temperatures turn cooler and the holiday season approaches.

Monthly rent growth peaked at +0.6 percent in March this year, but it then began to gradually trend down during the peak moving months, when rent growth is normally fastest. The flip to negative month-over-month growth also came a bit earlier than what we saw in pre-pandemic years, although this is now the third straight year that prices have begun to dip in August.

Although rents fell more in September than they did in August, this month’s decline was also slightly more modest than what we saw in September of last year, and as a result, year-over-year rent growth ticked up from -0.9 percent last month to this month’s reading of -0.8 percent. Earlier this year, it appeared that year-over-year growth was on track to flip positive for the first time since mid-2023. However, that rebound stalled out and reversed course over the summer as year-over-year growth dipped for five consecutive months. This month represents the first time since March that year-over-year growth has increased.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,394, down $11 per month compared to September 2024. With the overall trajectory of rents trending modestly downward in recent years, the national median rent has now fallen below its August 2022 peak by a total of 3.3 percent, or $48 per month. But that cooldown came following a period of record-setting rent growth, and the typical rent price remains 22 percent higher than its January 2021 level.

Multifamily vacancy rate hits 7.1%, a new peak

The most important driver behind the soft rent growth of recent years has been a historic surge of multifamily construction. 2024 saw over 600 thousand new multifamily units hit the market, representing a 65 percent increase compared to 2022 and the most new supply in a single year since 1986. We’re now past the peak of that supply wave, but there remain a significant number of units still in the construction pipeline. 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. And there remain 686 thousand units still under construction; while this has fallen considerably from a 2023 peak of 1 million, it is still well above the long-run average of 474 thousand units from 2000 to present.

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 – currently sits at 7.1 percent. This represents an all-time high for this data series, going back to the start of 2017. 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, and with labor market and broader macroeconomic indicators starting to look shakier, it could be a bit longer before rental market conditions tighten.

List-to-Lease time ticks up for third straight month

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. The typical “list-to-lease” time peaked at 37 days nationally in January, an all-time high going back to the start of the data series in 2019. We have since come down from that peak, but September saw time on market tick up for the third consecutive month, increasing from 29 days in August to 31 days this month.

The increasing list-to-lease time that we’ve seen recently is in line with the transition to negative rent growth as we enter the market’s off-season. But in addition to that seasonal trend, units are also sitting a bit longer than they typically do at this time of year, a signal of market softness in line with our rent growth and vacancy estimates. The median time on market nationally is currently one day longer than at this time last year, and units are sitting for 12 days longer than they were in September 2021 when the market was at its tightest.

New supply driving falling rents in Sun Belt markets while the Bay Area heats up

Rents declined month-over-month in 44 of the nation’s 54 large metropolitan areas with a population of over one million. At the same time, just 25 of these markets have seen rents fall since this time last year. Rent trends vary significantly by region, with year-over-year declines currently concentrated in the South and Mountain West regions.

Austin has seen the nation’s sharpest decline among large metros – the metro-wide median rent has fallen 6.5 percent in the last 12 months and is down 19% 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 permitting activity (e.g. Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Orlando, and Dallas). Notably almost all of these markets are located in the Sun Belt.

At the other end of the spectrum, the San Francisco metro currently has the nation’s fastest rent growth, with a 4.9 percent increase over the past year. The fastest growth in the San Francisco metro is happening in the urban core; the city of San Francisco has seen prices spike by a staggering 12.4 percent over the past year. Nearby San Jose is also among the top five for metro-level rent growth (+3.8 percent). Despite the recent strengthening of rent growth in the Bay Area, the region has been the slowest to bounce back from pandemic declines; in fact, we estimate that rents in the San Francisco metro have now just barely surpassed their early-2020 level. The remainder of the top ten list for fastest rent growth is comprised primarily of markets across the Midwest (e.g. Chicago and Minneapolis) and East Coast (e.g. Providence, RI and Virginia Beach, VA ).

Conclusion

All of our key indicators are pointing toward ongoing sluggishness in the multifamily rental market – rent prices are down and the vacancy rate is at an all-time high. As construction slows further in the second half of this year and into 2026, rent prices and occupancy should begin to stabilize, and a return to tighter market conditions remains on the horizon. That said, the outlook has been complicated by a continued influx of new units to the market and a weakening macroeconomic outlook, which could lengthen the time that it takes for the market to metabolize the recent growth in the rental stock.

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.