Apartment List National Rent Report

• The national median rent increased by 0.2% in February, and now stands at $1,357. This marks the first monthly increase since last July, as the market begins to pull out of its off-season pricing dip.
• Rent prices nationally are down 1.5% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has been slightly negative for well over two years, and the national median rent has now fallen from its 2022 peak by a total of 5.9%.
• The national multifamily vacancy rate ticked up to 7.4% this month, 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 40 days to get leased after being listed, which is four days longer than one year ago, and more than twice as long as it took units to turn over when the market was at its hottest in mid-2021.
• The Austin, TX metro continues to have the softest conditions among the nation’s large rental markets, with the median rent there down by 5.9% 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 +5.3%.

Rents up 0.2% month-over-month, down 1.5% year-over-year

The national median rent ticked up by 0.2 percent in February, flipping positive after six straight monthly rent declines. This officially marks the start of the market creeping out of the off-season, and we’ll likely see continued increases in the months ahead as moving activity ramps up. The timing of this month’s return to positive rent growth is in line with typical seasonal patterns – prices soften as fewer renters move during the fall and winter, and then gradually begin to increase as we get closer to the peak moving summer season. February has marked the return to positive rent growth in each of the last four years.

Rents prices have consistently followed this seasonal pattern, 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. In addition to steeper winter declines since 2022, we have also observed a slight 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. We’ll have a close eye on the data in the months ahead to see if 2026 continues that trend.

February’s rent increase (+0.2 percent) was a bit more modest than last year’s (+0.3 percent), and so we observe a drop in year-over-year rent growth to -1.5 percent. A year ago, it had 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 as demand has slowed amid a more uncertain labor market. This month’s -1.5 percent reading is the lowest year-over-year rent growth recorded since the summer of 2020, when the market was rocked by the early months of the pandemic.

In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,357, down $20 compared to February 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 $85 per month. Despite the pullback in prices, today’s rent levels remain 18 percent higher than they were at the start of 2021.

Multifamily vacancy rate hits 7.4%, 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. Then 2025 saw under 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 even as we exit the boom, supply growth remains fairly robust.

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 – increased to 7.4 percent in February. This represents the highest level since at least 2017, which is when we started tracking occupancy. Eventually, the market will absorb the swell of new units, and occupancy and pricing trends should begin to gradually tighten. But for now, conditions remain soft, and the runway for these sluggish conditions seems to have lengthened as a shaky labor market has put a damper on housing demand.

List-to-Lease time remains elevated at 40 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 ticked down slightly this month, in line with month-over-month rent growth flipping positive. Units leased in February had been sitting on the market for an average of 40 days, down from 41 days last month.

Despite the slight decline compared to last month, list-to-lease time remains notably elevated. This month’s reading is the longest that we’ve seen in any February going back to 2019 when our tracking begins (last month’s 41 days set the overall record), and units are taking more than twice as long to turn over as they were in mid-2021 when the market was at its hottest. This lengthening of list-to-lease time is in line with negative rent growth, soft occupancy, and a generally cool rental market.

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 February rents increased month-over-month in 49 of these markets, but rents are down year-over-year in 34 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 5.9 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. San Antonio, Denver, Phoenix, Tampa, and Charlotte). 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 5.3 percent over the past year. Two Bay Area metros – San Francisco and San Jose 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, with the region’s relative affordability propping up demand.

Conclusion

The rental market has begun to pull out of its winter off-season, but 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.