Apartment List National Rent Report

Overview

Welcome to the March 2025 Apartment List National Rent Report. Our national rent index flipped back to positive month-over-month rent growth, increasing by 0.3 percent in February following six straight monthly declines. Year-over-year growth also remains negative at -0.4 percent, but is slowly inching back toward positive territory. In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent now stands at $1,375, up $4 per month compared to last month, but down $5 compared to February 2024.

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 4.6 percent, or $67 per month. But despite the cooldown, the typical rent price remains nearly 20 percent higher than its January 2021 level.

On the supply side of the rental market, our national vacancy index now sits at 6.9 percent, the highest reading in the history of that monthly data series, which goes back to the start of 2017. After a historic tightening in 2021, multifamily occupancy has been slowly but consistently easing for over three 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, 75 of the nation’s 100 largest cities saw rents rise in February. On a year-over-year basis, rent growth is now positive for a majority of large cities (58 of the top 100). Our national index remains negative largely due to steeper declines in a concentrated set of Sun Belt metros that are rapidly expanding their multifamily inventory; these include Austin (-6.9 percent year-over-year), Denver (-4.7 percent), and Raleigh (-3.2 percent).

Rents are up 0.3% month-over-month, down 0.4% year-over-year

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. Demand tends to bounce back in the new year, gradually ramping up to peak season activity in the late spring and early summer. In keeping with that pattern, February saw a return to positive rent growth, with prices ticking up for the first time since last July. The national median rent increased by 0.3 percent from January to February, from $1,371 to $1,375.

Despite this month’s return to positive month-over-month rent growth, the overall pricing cooldown of the winter off-season has outweighed the price increases of last year’s busy season, such that year-over-year rent growth remains negative at -0.4 percent. This marks 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 4.6 percent below its mid-2022 peak. In dollar terms, the national median rent today is $5 per month cheaper than it was one year ago and $67 per month less than in August 2022, but still remains $228 per month higher than the January 2021 level.

Year-over-year rent growth has now been negative since June 2023, but in recent months, there are signs that a return to positive growth is on the horizon. Year-over-year growth bottomed out at -1.4 percent in September 2023, before bouncing back slightly and stabilizing at -0.8 percent from May through October 2024. But today it’s back on the rise, having ticked up in each of the past four monthly readings, gradually increasing from -0.8 percent in October 2024 to -0.4 percent today. With the supply wave now getting past its peak, it appears that the era of declining rents could be nearing its end.

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 in the spring of 2023 and has been steadily cooling off ever since.

Despite the progress, shelter CPI remains somewhat elevated and is one of the factors continuing to exert upward pressure on topline CPI. In fact, if you strip out shelter, the remainder of the CPI price basket has increased by 2.2 percent year-over-year as of January, just a touch above 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. Topline CPI inflation did increase in January, potentially complicating the picture for future interest rate cuts, but the housing components were not the driver. We’ll be continuing to keep a close eye on the official measures of housing inflation, but even as inflation remains top-of-mind, elevated shelter CPI is of lessening concern.

Multifamily vacancy rate hits 6.9%, a new peak

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 rapid job losses and economic uncertainty. Then, a suddenly tight rental market drove skyrocketing 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. As of February, our vacancy rate sits at 6.9 percent, surpassing the previous peak of 6.8 percent to set a new record for the highest reading in the history of this data series, which goes back to the start of 2017.

The rising vacancy rate in recent years is largely attributable to an influx of new multifamily inventory hitting the market. 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. 2025 is expected to see completions fall back from the 2024 peak, but there are still nearly 800 thousand multifamily units under construction, meaning that even as the supply boom begins to lose steam, it still has some runway in the first half of 2025. As new apartment completions decline, the vacancy index could begin to tighten again, but for now, we’re still seeing vacancies rise, even as rent declines gradually moderate.

Vacancy trends are highly localized, and they have been a key indicator of rapidly evolving conditions in local markets across the U.S. To explore the topic in greater detail, our monthly vacancy data are now (available for download)[https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/category/data-rent-estimates] 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 comes down from all-time new high

To close out 2024, the Apartment List Research team 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 February, the median time on market was 36 days, down from a recent peak of 37 days in January.

The slight decline in time on market in February is in line with the seasonal return to positive month-over-month rent growth that we observed this month. That said, this is still the highest time on market reading that we’ve seen in February of any year going back to the start of 2019, when the data series begins. Units are currently sitting vacant for 3 days longer than they were at this time last year, and for 10 days longer than they were in February 2022 when the market was just beginning to loosen. 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 February had been listed for a median of 46 days, 10 days 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 up month-over-month in 75 of 100 largest cities, up year-over-year in 58

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 the prolonged cooldown that has characterized the market since late 2022. In keeping with our national index’s return to positive rent growth, month-over-month rent growth was positive in February 2025 in 75 of the nation’s largest 100 cities.

Rents are also up in a majority of large cities on a year-over-year basis, with 58 of these cities logging positive annual rent 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, a trend consistent with our national rent index gradually inching up in recent months. Rent declines in major cities are still widespread, but they are no longer the norm. The fact that our national index is still logging negative year-over-year rent growth at a time when a majority of individual cities are seeing positive growth can be explained by the fact that a handful of major Sun Belt markets are still posting sizable declines, dragging down the national average.

New supply driving falling rents in Sun Belt markets while the Midwest sees the fastest 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 6.9 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. Denver, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Jacksonville). 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 5.1 percent increase over the past year – the only large metro to see rents rise by more than 5 percent over the past year. Cleveland is joined by three other Midwestern markets among the top 10 with the fastest growth – Kansas City, Detroit](https://www.apartmentlist.com/mi/detroit#rent-report), and Chicago. 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. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions are also seeing resilient rent growth, with Providence, RI, Hartford, CT, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD all cracking the top 10.

Tracking the L.A. rental market in the wildfire aftermath

This month’s report marks our first data release incorporating a full month of transactions taking place in the aftermath of the devastating wildfires that have upended lives across large swaths of Los Angeles. The fires are estimated to have destroyed nearly 12 thousand homes, causing a significant shock to the local housing market as those who have been displaced look for new homes. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order prohibiting rent gouging as the city recovers, but with that cap set at 10 percent, the fires could still have a meaningful impact on rent prices in a market where metro-wide rent growth had previously been essentially flat.

Across the Los Angeles metro as a whole, we estimate that rents increased by 0.7 percent in February, and are up by 0.8 percent year-to-date. Our city-level estimates show that the areas closest to the fires are seeing rents increase faster than that metro-wide average. Santa Monica, which borders the Palisades fire, has seen the area’s sharpest rent increase, with prices up 3 percent year-to-date. Meanwhile, Pasadena, which was heavily impacted by the Eaton fire, has seen prices increase by 2 percent, and neighboring Glendale and Burbank have seen increases of a similar magnitude. These increases are relatively modest so far and do not indicate evidence of widespread rent gouging, but they do seem to indicate that the trajectory of the area’s rent prices has been altered by the fires. Our team will be continuing to monitor this situation closely in the months ahead.

Conclusion

With February’s 0.3 percent increase, the rental market is beginning its gradual climb out of the off-season. Year-over-year growth remains negative (-0.4 percent), but is slowly creeping closer to positive territory. Rent increases are currently being moderated by a robust construction pipeline that delivered a decades-high number of new apartment units in 2024, but new completions are set to gradually come down from last year’s peak, even as a significant number of units remain in the construction pipeline. Demand for rentals going forward remains a bit more uncertain, and will likely hinge on broader macroeconomic conditions. Currently, it appears likely that 2025 will see a return to positive year-over-year rent growth, but that positive growth is likely to be modest.

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.