Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Rent of Primary Residence in U.S. City Average (CUUR0000SEHA) from Dec 1914 to Jan 2026 about primary, rent, urban, consumer, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

The monthly median asking rent for unfurnished apartments in the United States in the first quarter of 2025 amounted to ***** U.S. dollars. This was an increase of about *** U.S. dollars in just five years. In 2020, the median rent stood at ***** U.S. dollars. The U.S. rental market As rental apartment vacancy rates fall, rents are on the rise. This makes it more difficult for Americans to, first, find an apartment to rent, and second, find an apartment which they can afford. Nevertheless, renting has become much more common in recent years, with the number of renter households having substantially increased in the past two decades. In 2025, there were approximately **** million renter households in the U.S. Rents in different states Of course, rents vary from state to state. The most expensive rents are found in Hawaii, California, District of Colombia, New Jersey, and Florida. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, growth was the strongest in the Sun Belt states, and especially in states with lower costs of living, such as Texas. In Austin, TX, the average rent soared by nearly ** percent in 2021, and remained elevated, despite a slight decline in 2023.

The median monthly rent for all apartment types in the U.S. has stabilized since 2022, despite some seasonal fluctuations. In January 2026, the monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment amounted to ***** U.S. dollars. That was an increase from ***** U.S. dollars in January 2021, but a decline from the peak value of ***** U.S. dollars in August 2022. Where are the most expensive apartments in the U.S.? Apartment rents vary widely from state to state. To afford a two-bedroom apartment in California, for example, a renter needed to earn an average hourly wage of nearly ** U.S. dollars. This was approximately double the average wage in Michigan and 2.6 times as much as the average wage in Arkansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia. In fact, rental costs were considerably higher than the hourly minimum wage in all U.S. states. How did rents change in different states in the U.S.? In late 2025, some of the most expensive states to rent an apartment only saw a moderate increase in rental prices. Nevertheless, rents increased in about half of U.S. states as of January 2026. In North Dakota, the annual rental growth was the highest, at almost **** percent.

Displacement risk indicator classifying census tracts according to apartment rent prices in census tracts. We classify apartment rent along two dimensions: The average rents within the census tract for the specified year, balancing between nominal rental price and rental price per square foot.The change in average rent price (again balanced between nominal rent price and price per square foot) from the previous year. Note: Average rent calculations include market-rate and mixed-income multifamily apartment properties with 5 or more rental units in Seattle, excluding special types like student, senior, corporate or military housing. Source: Data from CoStar Group, www.costar.com, prepared by City of Seattle, Office of Planning and Community Development

The average monthly rent of apartments in California increased substantially in 2021, followed by a period of stabilization. In January 2026, the average rent of a two-bedroom apartment cost over ***** U.S. dollars, up from ***** U.S. dollars in December 2020 before rents started to rise. Nevertheless, not all cities saw rents rise at the same pace.

View quarterly updates and historical trends for US Median Asking Rent. from United States. Source: Census Bureau. Track economic data with YCharts analyt…

This dataset provides comprehensive information on the average income and rent in various states across the United States for the year 2022. It aims to offer insights into state-level economic trends and housing market dynamics.

Column Descriptions:

Region: Name of the state within the United States.

Average_Rent: Description: Average monthly rent for residential properties in each state, reflecting prevailing rental costs.

Average_Income: Average per capita income within each state, representing the average earnings of individuals residing in the state over the year.

The average monthly rent of apartments in Florida increased substantially in 2021, followed by two years of slight decrease. As of ********, the average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Florida cost ***** U.S. dollars, which was an increase of *** U.S. dollars from ******** when prices started to rise.

Monthly dataset of 1-bedroom multifamily apartment rent prices across major U.S. metropolitan areas, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, DC, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Houston. The dataset reflects median asking rents observed in October 2025 and is used to analyze pricing trends, affordability shifts, seasonal patterns, and year-over-year changes in the U.S. rental housing market. This dataset includes both national-level pricing benchmarks and metro-level indicators for high-cost, mid-tier, and affordable markets.

VITAL SIGNS INDICATOR
Rent Payments (EC8)

FULL MEASURE NAME
Median rent payment

LAST UPDATED
January 2023

DESCRIPTION
Rent payments refer to the cost of leasing an apartment or home and serves as a measure of housing costs for individuals who do not own a home. The data reflect the median monthly rent paid by Bay Area households across apartments and homes of various sizes and various levels of quality. This differs from advertised rents for available apartments, which usually are higher. Note that rent can be presented using nominal or real (inflation-adjusted) dollar values; data are presented inflation-adjusted to reflect changes in household purchasing power over time.

DATA SOURCE
U.S. Census Bureau: Decennial Census - https://nhgis.org
Count 2 (1970)
Form STF1 (1980-1990)
Form SF3a (2000)

U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey - https://data.census.gov/
Form B25058 (2005-2021; median contract rent)

Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index - https://www.bls.gov/data/
1970-2021

CONTACT INFORMATION
vitalsigns.info@mtc.ca.gov

METHODOLOGY NOTES (across all datasets for this indicator)
Rent data reflects median rent payments rather than list rents (refer to measure definition above). American Community Survey 1-year data is used for larger geographies – Bay counties and most metropolitan area counties – while smaller geographies rely upon 5-year rolling average data due to their smaller sample sizes. Note that 2020 data uses the 5-year estimates because the ACS did not collect 1-year data for 2020.

1970 Census data for median rent payments has been imputed from quintiles using methodology from California Department of Finance as the source data only provided the mean, rather than the median, monthly rent. Metro area boundaries reflects today’s metro area definitions by county for consistency, rather than historical metro area boundaries.

Inflation-adjusted data are presented to illustrate how rent payments have grown relative to overall price increases; that said, the use of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) does create some challenges given the fact that housing represents a major chunk of consumer goods bundle used to calculate CPI. This reflects a methodological tradeoff between precision and accuracy and is a common concern when working with any commodity that is a major component of CPI itself.

In January 2026, apartment rents recorded an annual growth in about half of U.S. states. The national average rent declined by about **** percent. North Dakota was the state with the largest rental increase at **** percent, while Colorado measured the largest decline at **** percent. California, one of the most expensive states to rent an apartment, saw an increase of about **** percent from the previous year. How much should you earn to afford to rent an apartment in different states in the U.S.? Both employment opportunities and living costs vary widely across the country. In California, which is among the most competitive housing markets in the U.S., the hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment rental was roughly ** U.S. dollars, about twice higher than in North Carolina, Louisiana, or Michigan in 2025. When it comes to the median household income, on the other hand, California does not even make it in the top ten states. How much should you earn to afford a home in some of U.S. largest metros? In 2025, the annual salary needed to buy a median-priced home in the U.S. was ******* U.S. dollars. However, in some of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, where housing prices are up to two or three times higher, homebuyers would have to earn considerably more than 100,000 U.S. dollars to afford a home. In San Jose, which was the most expensive metro, the annual salary needed for a median-priced home was approximately ******* U.S. dollars.

National-level index measuring median 1-bedroom multifamily apartment asking rents across the United States in October 2025. This benchmark series captures national pricing trends, seasonal movements, and year-over-year changes in the U.S. multifamily housing market.

Comprehensive dataset of average rental costs across major US cities, including one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartment prices

Price to Rent Ratio in the United States increased to 134.04 in the fourth quarter of 2024 from 133.46 in the third quarter of 2024. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States Price to Rent Ratio.

Context

The purpose of this dataset is to provide updated data on the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI). Most of the Zillow datasets on Kaggle have not been updated in four years, and no other dataset except one contains information related to rent. Providing updated data on this will also allow the community to analyze the effects of COVID-19 on rent prices, which could not be done with previous available data sets.

Content

Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI): A smoothed measure of the typical observed market rate rent across a given region. ZORI is a repeat-rent index that is weighted to the rental housing stock to ensure representativeness across the entire market, not just those homes currently listed for-rent. The index is dollar-denominated by computing the mean of listed rents that fall into the 40th to 60th percentile range for all homes and apartments in a given region, which is once again weighted to reflect the rental housing stock. Details available in ZORI methodology. https://www.zillow.com/research/methodology-zori-repeat-rent-27092/

This dataset contains two files. The Metro dataset looks at the median rent prices for large US cities. The ZIP code dataset breaks the US cities down by their ZIP codes. Note that the region IDs in both datasets are only used for tracking purposes. Also, some of the ZIP codes under the Region Name are less than the standard five-digit zip code and unreliable. Even if you add zeros in accounting for possible formatting mistakes. It is recommended to remove these entries since there is no way to identify which ZIP code the entry actually represents. These entries are left in here in case some analyst can solve the issue.

Acknowledgements

Zillow provides many useful open source datasets that relate to housing, which can be found at Zillow Research Data. https://www.zillow.com/research/data/ This dataset was also prompted by an older dataset I came across that only lacked updated data. https://www.kaggle.com/zillow/rent-index Thumbnail and banner picture is from this pixabay artist https://pixabay.com/users/pexels-2286921/

Inspiration

1. Where are the cheapest and most expensive ZIP codes to live?
2. We all know rent increases overtime, but has it been increasing at a faster rate since 2014?
3. If rent has been increasing at a faster rate, what year did it increase the fastest?
4. What cities or ZIP codes are increasing rent the fastest and by how much?
5. Did rent continue to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was it at a faster or slower rate than previous years?

Rents in the United States declined year-on-year for the first time in June 2023, after surging for two years in a row. In November 2021, rents soared by over ** percent annually — the highest increase on record, and in August 2022, the average rental price reached an all-time high of over ***** U.S. dollars. Rental growth has since mellowed, with January 2026 recording a decline of about **** percent from the same period one year ago. Despite the softening of the market, many states still experienced rising rents.

Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Rent of Primary Residence in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue WA (CBSA) (CUURA423SEHA) from Dec 1914 to Jan 2026 about Seattle, primary, rent, WA, urban, consumer, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

United States US: Price to Rent Ratio: sa data was reported at 133.313 2015=100 in 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of 133.000 2015=100 for 2023. United States US: Price to Rent Ratio: sa data is updated yearly, averaging 89.775 2015=100 from Dec 1970 (Median) to 2024, with 55 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 137.248 2015=100 in 2022 and a record low of 89.775 2015=100 in 1997. United States US: Price to Rent Ratio: sa data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.OECD.AHPI: House Price Index: Seasonally Adjusted: OECD Member: Annual. Nominal house prices divided by rent price indices

Graph and download economic data for Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Owners' Equivalent Rent of Primary Residence in U.S. City Average (CUSR0000SEHC01) from Jan 1983 to Feb 2026 about primary, rent, urban, consumer, CPI, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

In January 2026, New York, NY, was the most expensive rental market for one-bedroom apartments in the United States. The median monthly rental rate of an apartment in New York was ***** U.S. dollars, while in San Francisco, CA which ranked second highest, renters paid on average ***** U.S. dollars.