Tracking rents is important for understanding the dynamics of the housing market. Slower household formation and increased supply (more multi-family completions) has kept asking rents under pressure for the last few years.
More recently, immigration policy has become a negative for rentals.
Rents are down 0.2% month-over-month, down 0.9% year-over-year
The national median rent dipped by 0.2% in August, and now stands at $1,400. This was the first month-over-month decline since January, and marks the beginning of the rental market’s off-season. It’s likely that we’ll continue to see further modest rent declines through the remainder of the year.
Rent prices nationally are down 0.9% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has ticked further negative for four consecutive months and is now at its lowest level since December 2023.
The national multifamily vacancy rate now sits at 7.1%, record high for our index. We're past the peak of a multifamily construction surge, but a healthy supply of new units are still hitting the market, and vacancies are still trending up.
Realtor.com: 24th Consecutive Month with Year-over-year Decline in Rents
In July 2025, U.S. median rent recorded its 24th consecutive year-over-year decline, marking a two-year streak of downward momentum. Rent for 0-2 bedroom properties across the 50 largest metropolitan areas dropped by 2.5% compared with the previous year, with the median asking rent at $1,712—just $1 more than the prior month.
Cotality: Single Family Rents Up 2.9% year-over-year
Single-family rent prices in June 2025 increased 2.9% from June 2024, slightly less than the 3.1% average increase a year ago. Single-family rent growth appears to have stabilized slightly under the pre-pandemic average.
“Annual single-family rent growth appears to have stabilized just shy of 3% in 2025, approaching the long-run average of 3.4% seen before the pandemic. The monthly growth rate in June was close to the historical average for that month and has been above the seasonal trend for nearly every month of 2025,” said Molly Boesel, Cotality senior principal economist. “While rent growth weakened in most large metropolitan areas in June, exceptions included New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, increased rent growth is likely due to the dissipating effects of the January wildfires. The rising rent growth in Northeast markets like New York and Philadelphia could be a spillover effect from the home sales market, where strengthening home prices may be pricing out potential buyers.”
Real Page on August Rents: Annual Rent Growth of -0.2%
U.S. apartment occupancy eased a bit to 95.4% in August, according to data from RealPage Market Analytics. That was down 10 basis points (bps) from the July showing but still matched the market’s five-year average. Year-over-year, occupancy was up 130 bps.
As a result of fading occupancy, effective asking rents were down in the year-ending August, for the first time since the COVID-19 recession. Prices fell 0.2% year-over-year across the U.S. Annual price increases have been negligible for a while now, but this is the first tine annual rent cuts have emerged since March 2021.
July 2025 Rent Growth: National rent growth slowed to 2.6% year over year, down from 2.9 in June. Single-family rents were 3.4% higher than a year ago, while multifamily rents increased 2.1% during that same period.
Rent Data
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