Apartment List National Rent Report

Overview

Welcome to the January 2025 Apartment List National Rent Report. The national median monthly rent closed out 2024 at $1,373 in December, after declining by 0.6 percent, or $8, from the prior month. Year-over-year rent growth nationally also currently stands at -0.6 percent, meaning that the typical apartment is currently renting for slightly less than it was one year ago.

Since the second half of 2022, rent prices have continued to ebb and flow with the seasons as they typically do, but with the overall trajectory trending modestly downward. Following a period of record-setting rent growth in 2021 and the first half of 2022, the national median rent has now fallen below its August 2022 peak by a total of 4.8 percent. But despite the cooldown, the typical rent price remains 20 percent higher than its January 2021 level.

On the supply side of the rental market, our national vacancy index continues trending up slowly and currently sits at 6.8 percent, the highest reading since the onset of the pandemic. After a historic tightening in 2021, multifamily occupancy has been slowly but consistently easing for over two years amid an influx of new inventory. 2024 saw the most new apartment completions since the mid-1980s, and with nearly 800 thousand units still in the construction pipeline, the supply boom has runway to continue into 2025.

Zooming in to the local level, 88 of the nation’s 100 largest cities saw rents fall in November, in line with the broader national trend. But on a year-over-year basis, rent growth was negative for just 49 of these cities, as more individual markets gradually returned to positive rent growth. Many of the steepest year-over-year declines remain concentrated in Sun Belt metros that are rapidly expanding their multifamily inventory, such as Austin (-7.4 percent year-over-year), Raleigh (-4.1 percent), and Jacksonville (-3 percent).

Rents are down 0.6% on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis

Rent growth follows a seasonal pattern – prices tend to go up during the spring and summer and dip during the fall and winter. The end of the year, in particular, generally sees the slowest rental market activity, as few households move during the holiday season. That lack of demand tends to result in modest discounts from property owners with vacancies to fill. In keeping with that pattern, 2024 ended with a fifth consecutive monthly dip in December. As moving activity picks back up in the new year, we are likely to see these monthly declines moderate and then flip back to positive growth in the coming months.

While rent growth continued to follow its typical seasonal pattern in 2024, the off-season cooldown outweighed busy season price increases, such that full-year rent growth for 2024 ended up negative at -0.6 percent. This marks the second straight year of declining rents, and the third consecutive winter in which seasonal discounts have been notably sharper than the pre-pandemic norm. As an influx of new supply has collided with softer demand over the past two and a half years, the national median rent has gradually dipped 4.8 percent below its mid-2022 peak. In dollar terms, the national median rent today is $8 per month cheaper than it was one year ago and $50 per month less than in August 2022, but still remains $225 per month higher than the January 2021 level.

Rent CPI remains elevated, but is no longer a blocker for the Fed

The primary measure of inflation in the United States is the Bureau of Labor Statistics's Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is heavily influenced by changes in housing prices.¹ The Apartment List National Rent Index has proven to be a strong leading indicator of the CPI housing and rent components (collectively referred to as “shelter”), since our index captures price changes in new leases, which are only later reflected in price changes across all leases (what the CPI measures).

Because of these methodological differences, when our index peaked with record-setting rent growth in late 2021, the CPI’s measure of housing cost inflation was still in the early stages of its upswing. And while rent growth as measured by our index was cooling over the course of 2022, the CPI measure continued to rise. But as our index had predicted, the shelter component of CPI turned the corner last spring and has been steadily cooling off ever since.

Despite the progress, shelter CPI remains elevated and is one of the key factors continuing to exert upward pressure on topline CPI. In fact, if you strip out shelter, the remainder of the CPI price basket increased by just 1.6 percent year-over-year, solidly below the Fed’s long-term 2 percent inflation target. As shelter inflation continues to trend down, it will help improve the overall inflation picture, but it will still take time for shelter CPI to fully metabolize the shock to market rents.

However, the Fed understands that shelter CPI captures real-time changes in the housing market gradually and with a lengthy lag, and heightened shelter inflation has ceased to be a blocker to interest rate cuts. The Fed officially shifted course in late-2024, cutting interest rates three times, and additional cuts are expected in 2025. We’ll be continuing to keep a close eye on the official measures of housing inflation, but the Fed’s actions indicate that elevated shelter CPI is of lessening concern.

Apartment vacancies remain elevated

The rapid price fluctuations that have defined the rental market over the past three years are largely attributable to changes in the balance between the number of vacant apartments available (supply) and the number of renters looking to move into them (demand). Early in the pandemic, the Apartment List Vacancy Index rose to 6.8 percent as many Americans consolidated households and moved in with family amid large job losses and economic uncertainty. Then, a suddenly tight rental market drove rapid rent growth in 2021 and 2022 as more households competed for a dwindling supply of vacant units. Our vacancy index tightened from 6.8 percent to 3.8 percent in just over a year.

But after bottoming out in October 2021, vacancies have been opening up steadily for over three full years. Our vacancy rate ended 2024 with a 6.8 percent reading in December, matching the level that it jumped to in the early months of the pandemic and exceeding the 2019 average of 6.2 percent.

The rising vacancy rate in recent years is largely attributable to an influx of new multifamily inventory hitting the market. 2023 marked a 30-year high for new multifamily units completing construction, and 2024 saw new completions increase even further. Despite a recent slowdown in new building permits being issued and new construction projects breaking ground, there are still nearly 800 thousand multifamily units under construction, meaning that the supply boom should continue well into 2025.

Vacancy trends are highly localized, and they have been a key indicator of rapidly evolving conditions in local markets across the U.S. throughout the pandemic. To explore the topic in greater detail, monthly vacancy data are now available for download for hundreds of cities, metros, and states, and can be easily linked to our existing rent estimates using Federal Information Processing System (FIPS) codes.

List-to-Lease time hits a new high

Last month, we officially released our newest market indicator – the “time on market” index. This new data series reports the length of time it takes for vacant units to get leased after they are first listed as available on our platform. Time on market tracks with our existing rent and vacancy data series in intuitive ways. In addition to mirroring the seasonality of our rent index, time on market also exhibits clear trends that track longer macro cycles.

Amid hot market conditions when rents are rising quickly and vacancies are tight, units tend to rent quickly – this can be seen in the chart below as time on market dipped below 20 days in the summer of 2021. Conversely, when market conditions are cooler – as they currently are – it tends to take longer for vacant units to get leased. Among units that were leased in December, the median time on market was 36 days, up from 34 days in November.

The median time on market of 36 days in December is the highest reading that we’ve seen for this metric in any month going back to the start of 2019, when the data series begins. It seems that the influx of new supply is resulting not only in a growing number of vacant units, but also in an increase in the length of time those units remain unoccupied.

This new time on market data illuminates not just national trends, but regional ones as well. For instance, in Austin, TX – currently the nation’s softest rental market – units leased in December had been listed for a median of 43 days, a full week longer than the national average. We now publish local “time on market” data for nearly 200 individual locations, spanning states, metros, counties, and cities, on our Data Download page for those interested in seeing how their market dynamics compare to the national trend.

Rents are down month-over-month in 88 of 100 largest cities, down year-over-year in 47

The chart below visualizes monthly rent changes in each of the nation’s 100 largest cities from January 2019 to present. The color in each cell represents the extent to which prices went up (red) or down (blue) in a given city in a given month. We see a typical seasonal pattern in 2019, followed by 2020, where horizontal bands of dark blue represent steep rent drops in some of the nation’s largest and most expensive cities. Meanwhile, the dark red bands in 2021 and 2022 represent the rent heatwave that drove up prices nationwide. But the right side of the chart shows a strong cooldown in late 2022 and only modest rent growth in the two summers that follow. Rent growth was negative in December 2024 in the majority of large cities across the country; 88 of the nation’s largest 100 cities saw prices fall month-over-month.

But rents are down year-over-year in just 49 of these cities, as a growing number of cities tip back into positive annual growth. Last August, 73 of the nation’s 100 largest cities were posting year-over-year rent declines, but that number has been gradually falling even as year-over-year growth nationally has held fairly steady. That said, rent declines in major cities are still quite common today, and in some cases the dips have been considerable. Most of the cities posting the largest declines are concentrated in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and along the West Coast. In contrast, many large cities in the Midwest and Northeast are still experiencing positive annual rent growth.

New supply driving falling rents in Sun Belt markets while Midwest and Northeast maintain positive growth

The prevalence of year-over-year rent declines in Sun Belt markets can be clearly seen in the metro-level map below. The Austin metro has seen the nation’s sharpest decline among large metros, with prices there down 7.4 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, signaling the important role new supply plays in managing long-term affordability. 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. Raleigh, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Phoenix). Notably all of these markets are located in the Sun Belt.

At the other end of the spectrum, Cleveland, OH has seen the nation’s fastest rent growth, with a 5.7 percent increase over the past year. Cleveland is joined by four other Midwestern markets among the top 10 with the fastest growth – Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Louisville, and Detroit. While the Midwest has long had among the most affordable housing costs in the nation, rent growth in many of the region’s major markets is now outpacing the national average. Other markets in the top 10 include expensive markets such as Honolulu and San Jose, where rental demand has long outstripped supply growth. Note, however, that even the markets topping the list are mostly experiencing fairly modest rent growth. Only two large metros (Cleveland and Honolulu) have seen rents rise by more than 5 percent over the past year.

Conclusion

With December’s 0.6 percent decrease, 2024 closed out as the second straight year in which the national median rent ended the year lower than it started. Rent increases are currently being moderated by a robust construction pipeline that delivered a decades-high number of new apartment units in 2024. While the supply boom may have peaked in 2024, there is considerable runway still to go in 2025. And while rental demand has bounced back a bit this year, recent signs of labor market softness could dampen demand going forward. With this in mind, we expect that new supply will continue to outstrip demand into 2025.

For more detailed data, see the table below, which contains the most recent estimates for the nation’s 100 largest cities. And for complete data, see our rental data download page, where you can download the full history of our monthly estimates going back to 2017 at various geographic levels (national, state, metro, county, and city). And as always, feel free to contact us with any questions.

A Note on Our Methodology

Apartment List has long been committed to making our data products as accurate and transparent as possible. Our rent estimates and vacancy index are calculated as follows:

Rent Estimates: We estimate rent growth using a same-unit approach that controls for compositional changes in the rental stock. We also control for price fluctuations that arise over the course of a vacancy by identifying the last available list price before a unit gets rented as a proxy for its transacted price. Finally, we combat luxury bias in our rent data by benchmarking our reported rent levels to fully-representative median rent statistics from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Vacancy Index: Our real-time availability data allows us to calculate a daily vacancy rate for each of our partner properties, which we then average over the course of each month to calculate a monthly rate. Our overall index is an average of these property-level vacancy rates, weighted by the number of units in each property. We restrict our sample to properties that have been on Apartment List for at least six months and that have attained a stabilized vacancy rate of 15% or less.

For those interested in getting deeper in the weeds, please see our rent estimate methodology and vacancy index methodology. And if you have any questions or custom data requests, you can reach us at research@apartmentlist.com.

For more context on local data, check out our market-specific rent reports for the following cities:

• Atlanta, GA
• Austin, TX
• Baltimore, MD
• Boston, MA
• Boulder, CO
• Charlotte, NC
• Chicago, IL
• Cleveland, OH
• Colorado Springs, CO
• Dallas, TX
• Denver, CO
• Detroit, MI
• Fort Collins, CO
• Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Houston, TX
• Indianapolis, IN
• Jacksonville, FL
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• Minneapolis, MN
• Nashville, TN
• New Orleans, LA
• New York, NY
• Orlando, FL
• Phoenix, AZ
• Philadelphia, PA
• Raleigh, NC
• San Antonio, TX
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• San Jose, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Tallahassee, FL
• Tampa, FL
• Tucson, AZ
• Washington, DC

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About Apartment List Rent Reports:

Apartment List’s Rent Reports cover rental pricing data in major cities, their suburbs, and their neighborhoods. We provide valuable leading indicators of rental price trends, highlight data on top cities, and identify the key facts renters should know. As always, our goal is to provide price transparency to America’s 105 million renters to help them make the best possible decisions in choosing a place to call home. Apartment List publishes Rent Reports during the first calendar week of each month.