Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent increased by 0.2% in June and now stands at $1,401. This is the 5th consecutive month that rents have trended up, but rent growth has been slowing at the time of year when it's typically fastest.
• Despite the modest increases of recent months the national median rent is still down 0.7% from where it was one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth had been close to flipping positive for the first time since 2023, but has now ticked further negative for the past two months.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate currently stands at 7%, the highest reading we've recorded in our index. We're past the peak of a multifamily construction surge, but the market is still absorbing all of the new units, and vacancies are still trending up.
• Units are taking an average of 27 days to get leased after being listed, down from a high of 37 days in January.
• The Austin metro is currently the nation’s softest rental market, with the median rent there down by 6.4% over the past year; San Francisco has seen the fastest year-over-year rent growth (+4.9%).

Rents are up 0.2% month-over-month, down 0.7% year-over-year

The national median rent increased by 0.2 percent in June, ticking up for the fifth consecutive month. But after increasing by 0.6 in March, our national rent index has seen its growth rate trending down over the past three months, at odds with the typical seasonal trend.

The late spring and summer months are normally the peak season for moving activity, and rent growth tends to ramp up at this time of year in tandem with demand. The fact that we’ve instead seen rent growth get increasingly sluggish indicates softness in the market, possibly reflecting declining consumer confidence amid a more uncertain macroeconomic outlook.

Month-over-month rent growth this June was slightly slower than what we saw in June of last year – as a result, year-over-year rent growth dipped this month, falling to -0.7 percent. This continues a change in trajectory that we first observed last month. From last October through this March, year-over-year rent growth nationally gradually ticked up from -0.8 percent to -0.3 percent, and appeared to be on the path to flipping positive for the first time since mid-2023. That rebound has now stalled out amid a slow moving season.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,401, up just $3 per month compared to last month, and down $9 compared to June 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 2.8 percent, or $41 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%, 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. 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 stands at 7 percent. This represents an all-time high for this data series, which goes back to the start of 2017. We are now past the peak of the apartment construction wave, but even as the level of new supply hitting the market falls sharply compared to last year, it remains robust by historic standards. The vacancy rate will begin to tighten eventually, but for now it continues to rise as the market is still absorbing a swell of new units.

List-to-Lease time comes down from all-time high

As more vacant units have come onto the market, those units have also been sitting vacant for somewhat longer. Our time on market index reports the typical length of time it takes for vacant units to get leased after they are first listed as available on our platform. This “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. Since then, however, this time has been shortening, and among units that were leased in June, the median time on market was 27 days, down from 28 days in May.

The shortening of list-to-lease time that we’ve seen since the start of this year is in line with seasonal trends. That said, units are still 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 eight days longer than they were in June 2022 when the market was at its tightest.

New supply driving falling rents in Sun Belt markets while the Northeast, Midwest, and CA see prices trending up

Rents increased month-over-month in 38 of the nation’s 54 large metropolitan areas with a population of over one million. Rents are also up in a slight majority of large metros on a year-over-year basis, with 28 of these cities logging positive annual rent growth. 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, with prices there down 6.4 percent in the last 12 months. 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 sharpest year-over-year rent declines, many also rank among the highest in terms of multifamily permitting activity (e.g. Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, 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, while nearby San Jose also cracks the top ten. 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 are still 0.6 percent below their early-2020 level. The remainder of the top ten is comprised primarily of markets across the Midwest (e.g. Chicago and Pittsburgh) and Northeast (e.g. Providence, RI and Hartford, CT) and.

Conclusion

All of our key indicators are pointing toward a sluggish summer moving season – rent growth is slipping and the multifamily vacancy rate is at an all time high. A return to tighter market conditions should still be on the horizon as the supply wave continues to recede, but the outlook has been complicated by macroeconomic whiplash being caused by tariffs and other policies being pursued by the Trump administration. This uncertainty appears to be weighing on demand, but the magnitude of that impact is not yet clear.

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.