Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent fell 0.2% in January, and now stands at $1,353. This marks the sixth consecutive month that rents have declined, and this is now the fourth consecutive winter with a pronounced off-season dip.
• Rent prices nationally are down 1.4% 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 6.2%.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate now sits at 7.3%, a record high for our index going back to 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 41 days to get leased after being listed, which is four 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 6.3% over the past year. At the other end of the spectrum, the Virginia Beach, VA metro now sits atop our rankings of fastest year-over-year rent growth at +5%.

Rents down 0.2% month-over-month, down 1.4% year-over-year

The national median rent dipped by 0.2 percent in January, starting the new year with the sixth straight monthly rent decline. That said, this was the most modest dip since last August, signalling that the market is beginning to creep out of the off-season and will likely return to positive rent growth in the months ahead. 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 the annual peak for rent growth, over the past three years March has been the hottest month, with rent growth slowing down during what were, prior to the pandemic, the months when prices would increase most quickly. The flip to negative rent growth is also coming earlier, with prices beginning to dip in August rather than September.

January’s rent decline (-0.2 percent) was a bit steeper than last year’s (-0.1 percent), and so we observe a drop in year-over-year rent growth to -1.4 percent. Early last year, it appeared 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 slow summer moving season that has now dragged into the winter. This month’s -1.4 percent reading is the lowest year-over-year rent growth recorded since August 2023.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,353, down $20 compared to January 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 5.9 percent, or $89 per month. Despite the pullback in prices, today’s rent levels remain 18 percent higher than they were at the end of 2020.

Multifamily vacancy rate hits 7.3%, highest level since 2017

The most important driver behind the soft market conditions that have persisted for three years is a historic surge of multifamily construction. Today, we’re past the peak of that supply wave, but multifamily construction remains elevated. 2024 saw over 600 thousand new multifamily units hit the market, the most new supply in a single year since 1986. 2025 saw closer to 500 thousand units delivered, and 2026 is expected to bring even fewer. But despite the sharp pullback, the number of units expected to hit the market this year is still a bit 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 start 2026. 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.

List-to-Lease time also reaches a new peak: 41 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 41 days in January, eclipsing the previous high set one year ago.

This increase in list-to-lease time is in line with negative rent growth, soft occupancy, and a general off-season cooling of the rental market. Time on market is up four days compared to last January, 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. In January rents declined month-over-month in 39 of these markets, and rents are down year-over-year in 32 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 despite the winter slowdown.

Austin has seen the nation’s sharpest decline among large metros – the metro-wide median rent there has fallen 6.3 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, Tampa, and Raleigh). Notably almost all of these markets are located in the Sun Belt.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Virginia Beach, VA metro currently sits in the top spot for fastest rent growth, with prices there up 5 percent over the past year. Two Bay Area metros – San Jose and San Francisco round out the top three, as the AI boom has created a wave of high-paying tech jobs there. A number of midwest markets (e.g. Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis) have also been maintaining steady positive rent growth amid soft national conditions.

Conclusion

As we start the new year, multifamily conditions remain soft. Year-over-year rent growth remains negative, while vacancies and time-on-market continue to inch up. The wave of construction that has been driving these conditions is waning, but whether or not market conditions shift will now depend on rental demand, whose outlook has grown shakier due to 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.