If you are in the market for rentals, the Sun Belt—and Florida to be specific—is the place to be.
According to Redfin, the nation’s median asking rent price rose to $1,648 in April, up 1% marking the first increase in a year. And while Seattle may have grabbed the top spot on the rent decline list with a 7.3% drop in the last 12 months, locations in the Sun Belt took up the following nine spots:
- Austin, Texas (down 6.6%)
- Nashville, Tennessee (down 5.9%)
- Jacksonville, Florida (down 5.6%)
- Miami, Florida (down 5%)
- San Diego, California (down 4.7%)
- Phoenix, Arizona (down 4.6%)
- Charlotte, North Carolina (down 4.5%)
- Tampa, Florida (down 4.3%)
- Orlando, Florida (down 3.2%)
Note that four of these areas are on Florida’s West Coast, where home prices are stagnating as supply surges. The area is also in the midst of a housing insurance crisis due to intensifying natural disasters.
“The Sun Belt has built a ton of new apartments in recent years, partly to meet the surge in demand brought on by the flood of people who moved in during the pandemic housing boom. But the boom is over, and now property owners are struggling to fill vacancies, which is causing rents to fall,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “The good news is that the uptick in housing supply in the Sun Belt has improved affordability for renters, which can be a lesson for other American cities grappling with housing affordability challenges.”
Note that Seattle, like the Sun Belt, has had surging apartment construction in the past few years.
Conversely, the affordable Midwest had the fastest rising rents, with median asking rents in Minneapolis jumping 10.3% from this time last year, the biggest uptick among the 33 metros Redfin analyzed.
Other rent increases included:
- Cincinnati, Ohio (up 9.9%)
- Chicago, Illinois (up 9.1%)
- New York, New York (up 8.9%)
- Washington, D.C. (up 8.6%)
- Indianapolis, Indiana (up 8%)
- Virginia Beach, Virginia (up 7.7%)
- Houston, Texas (up 6.7%)
- Boston, Massachusetts (up 5.7%)
- Detroit, Michigan (up 4.9%)
That said, rent prices nationwide are still elevated. The record high median asking rent was $1,700 reported in August 2022, and the current rent is just 3.1% ($52) below that.
Click here for more information on Redfin’s latest analysis of rent trends.
