ApartmentAdvisor National Rent Report
February 2025
The ApartmentAdvisor National Rent Report is published monthly and includes national rent trend data as well as rent price data by state and by city.
Overview
- In most of the country, the February rent thaw has begun.
- In a few warm-weather markets like Albuquerque, there is little seasonality when it comes to price.
- A looming insurance crisis has driven Louisiana rents way up.
U.S. National Rent Trends
The median national rent for a 1-bedroom rental apartment in the U.S. was $1,550 in February 2025, 6.9% higher than the median national rent for January.
Median Rents
Rent Prices Over Time in the U.S.
Key Findings
National Overview: It’s time for rent prices to start climbing again this year.
Rent is up in half the markets we track this month, and the national median rent price for a one-bedroom increased by 6.9% to $1,550.
As we reported last month, rent prices typically reach their all-time low in January and begin slowly climbing back up in February. This year is no exception, and renters in the market can expect to see asking rent prices start ticking up month after month until the end of the summer when demand will peak.
We did not see a strong regional trend as far as price increases in February, which affected cities across the country. The markets with the biggest rent growth were Columbus, OH (+11.7% MoM), Miami, FL (+10.8% MoM), Buffalo, NY (+9.4% MoM), Baton Rouge, LA (+9.1%), and Greensboro, NC (+9% MoM).
Regional Deep Dive: In a few warm-weather markets, seasonality has
had little effect on price this year.
This month, we decided to look at the rental markets that offer a rare relief for renters: price stability. To do so, we analyzed MoM and YoY rent price changes over 2024 and 2025 so far.
Albuquerque, NM, Richmond, VA, Tucson, AZ, and Portland, OR had the least price fluctuation over that period of time.
Seasonality affects almost every rental market in the U.S. to some degree, but these warm-weather cities had the most price stable rental markets in the country this past year. And while each of these areas do experience a “wet season” or “monsoon season,” we did not see any strong rent swings as a result of them last year.
Albuquerque was the city with the least fluctuation; the largest MoM rent change in 2024 in was $15. Along with the rest of the country, Albuquerque rents spiked by about $200 in mid-2022 as a result of the pandemic, climbed through mid-2023, and then began to drop until eventually reaching a stable point in January 2024. It’s a similar story in Richmond, Portland, and nearby Tucson.
Average Rent by City
Top 10 Most Expensive Cities to Rent an Apartment
Top 10 Least Expensive Cities to Rent an Apartment
Rent Prices in 100 Major Cities
This table shows median rent data for 100 major cities in the US.
To download this data as a CSV, click .
Average Rent by State
Louisiana saw the biggest MoM and YoY rent increase in February
Rental prices in Louisiana have been skyrocketing, showing an increase of 15.8% month-over-month and 20.6% year-over-year in February. One potential reason is the rising cost of property insurance. Louisiana has been facing a historic insurance crisis for years as a result of multiple devastating hurricanes. Insurance companies are becoming insolvent, leaving the state, or raising prices dramatically — and property owners, as well as their tenants, are facing the consequences. As insurance premiums double or, in some cases, triple, many renters are eating the costs on behalf of their landlords in housing markets like New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Report Methodology
For the National Rent Report, ApartmentAdvisor analyzes rental listings available on our platform, sourced from multiple listing syndication partners. The set of 100 large cities highlighted in our report is primarily determined by overall population size, however we include some smaller cities with relatively high populations for the home state (e.g. Burlington, VT and Portland, ME) and we exclude some highly populated cities due to their proximity to other major cities (eg. Garland, Texas is not included due to its proximity to Dallas). We take all the unique apartments that were available for any amount of time during a time period, deduplicate them by unit type, and remove unreliable listings. We use a minimum threshold of units for cities to ensure that data is accurate. Luxury bias is removed by focusing on median figures instead of averages.
Top cities
Atlanta Apartments
1,894 apartments starting at $650/month
Austin Apartments
4,241 apartments starting at $664/month
Baltimore Apartments
1,491 apartments starting at $500/month
Boston Apartments
4,643 apartments starting at $1,595/month
Charlotte Apartments
2,966 apartments starting at $560/month
Chicago Apartments
6,218 apartments starting at $600/month
Dallas Apartments
5,541 apartments starting at $660/month
Fort Worth Apartments
2,093 apartments starting at $538/month
Houston Apartments
4,262 apartments starting at $495/month
Las Vegas Apartments
1,053 apartments starting at $700/month
Los Angeles Apartments
6,949 apartments starting at $642/month
Miami Apartments
521 apartments starting at $1,300/month
Milwaukee Apartments
1,161 apartments starting at $595/month
New York Apartments
2,882 apartments starting at $550/month
Oakland Apartments
579 apartments starting at $1,025/month
Orlando Apartments
799 apartments starting at $925/month
Philadelphia Apartments
3,310 apartments starting at $475/month
Phoenix Apartments
4,093 apartments starting at $599/month
Pittsburgh Apartments
1,607 apartments starting at $650/month
Portland Apartments
2,602 apartments starting at $600/month
Raleigh Apartments
1,295 apartments starting at $625/month
San Antonio Apartments
3,621 apartments starting at $499/month
San Diego Apartments
3,074 apartments starting at $615/month
San Francisco Apartments
426 apartments starting at $675/month
San Jose Apartments
401 apartments starting at $1,300/month
Seattle Apartments
3,454 apartments starting at $450/month
Tampa Apartments
1,086 apartments starting at $795/month
Washington DC Apartments
2,859 apartments starting at $879/month