Good news for renters: reversing a decade-long trend, the average size of new apartments expanded again in 2024, with the most substantial space gains are appearing in Coastal and Sunbelt cities, per RentCafe.com’s latest annual analysis of the U.S. rental landscape.
Key Takeaways
- The average apartment size in the U.S. increased in 2024, reaching 908 square feet; most unit types expanded their living spaces.
- Studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments got larger, adding between 4 and 13 square feet to their floorplans.
- Tallahassee and Gainesville claimed the top two spots on the list of cities with the largest apartments.
- Apartments in San Francisco have expanded the most among large cities, gaining 59 square feet in the last decade. Queens is next, with renters gaining 39 square feet.
RentCafe.com looked at the size of apartments across the 100 largest renter hubs in the U.S. as of February 2025, reviewing not just the cities with the biggest and smallest apartment sizes, but also those which saw the most significant gains in square feet in the last 10 years compared to the decade before.
Tallahassee, Florida and Gainesville, Georgia now lead the nation in apartment size, while Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon have the smallest units in the U.S.
The most significant growth over the past decade belongs to San Francisco, Queens, and Brooklyn. The former added an average of 59 square feet per unit (basically, a small patio worth of space), while the two New York boroughs expanded by 39 and 6 square feet, respectively.
However, the real winner is Marietta, Georgia, which gained 100 square feet for its typical new apartment built in the last decade, compared to rentals built before 2015. Cleveland ranked third among the nation’s largest cities with a gain of 57 square feet.
Smaller Apartments Are Growing
One-bedroom apartments, developers’ preference last year and in the previous decade, accounted for 48% of newly built apartments. Two- and three-bedroom apartments, on the other hand, have shrunk during the same time.
Studios and one-bedrooms account for 52.7% of the new units in the rental market, with smaller apartments dictating the trend for more living space, leading to an average of 908 square feet in 2024 (up 4 square feet from 2023). Studios have grown the most, adding 13 square feet; one-bedroom apartments increased slightly by 6 square feet; and two-bedroom units were up 4 square feet.
In response to evolving market demands for cities, where location is more important than size, developers have scaled down three-bedroom apartments, shrinking them an average of 15 square feet from the previous year.
The South Is Most Spacious
Tallahassee, Florida ranked number one among the 100 cities analyzed, with an average of 1,130 square feet for new units completed in the last 10 years, even as apartments in the metro have actually shrunk by 49 square feet compared to those built before 2015, due to the share of two- and three-bedroom apartments growing smaller.
Second place goes to Gainesville, Florida, gaining 11 square feet to increase the average size for apartments built in the past decade to 1,122 square feet. Baton Rouge, Louisiana took third, with an increase of 11 square feet to land at an average size of 1,055 square feet. Then it was Knoxville, Tennessee with an average apartment size of 1,041 square feet, with Marietta, Georgia rounding out the top five with it’s amazing 100 square foot increase to 1,041 square feet. That’s enough to put in a new home office.
Large Urban Hubs Losing Space
San Francisco, Queens, and Manhattan saw an increase in square footage compared to rentals built before 2015, but most cities are still experiencing a decline.
Seattle, for instance, took top spot for cities with the smallest new apartments. Units completed there between 2015 and 2024 averaged 649 square feet, a 57-square-foot decrease compared to older rentals. Portland, Oregon was a close second, where apartments shrunk by 79 square feet, leaving renters with just 668 square feet of space.
Meanwhile, Queens and Brooklyn have reached 702 and 708 square feet, respectively, breaking past the 700-square-foot barrier. Rentals in both boroughs gained a few extra square feet in the last decade—39 and 6 square feet, respectively. Developers in Queens even increased the share of two- and three-bedroom apartments.
San Francisco rounds out the top five, also breaking the 700-square-foot mark with an average apartment size of 716 square feet. That’s a 59-square-foot increase in the last decade, driven by a surge in the share of two-bedroom apartments. Studios gained 70 square feet, as well.
A noteworthy mention is Manhattan, landing at seventh for the smallest apartment size nationwide, at 738 square feet. But new rentals in that New York City borough are 4 square feet more spacious than those in the past, thanks in large part to one- and two-bedroom apartments getting bigger during the past decade (by 15 and 71 square feet, respectively).
Sunbelt and Coastal City Apartments Growing in Size
Renters who are looking for more elbow room should set their sights on Marietta, Georgia, where apartments gained an extra 100 square feet compared to those completed between 2005 and 2014.
This is the most significant expansion in apartment size among the nation’s largest cities. In fact, the Atlanta suburb surpassed both Tallahassee, Florida and Gainesville, Georgia—the nation’s top two cities for apartment size—when it came to apartment size growth. This was a result of Marietta, Georgia developers focusing on expanding the size of one-bedroom units and bringing more two- and three-bedroom apartments online.
Next on the getting-larger list is San Francisco, where the average new apartment offers an extra 59 square feet compared to older units. Third is Cleveland, Ohio, where the average size of new units increased by 57 square feet. Queens takes fourth place, with rentals built during the past ten years benefiting from an extra 39 square feet, and St. Petersburg, Florida rounds out the top five, with apartments growing by 22 square feet.
Cities With Shrinking Apartments
Some cities are seeing smaller apartments these days—215 square feet smaller, in Arlington, Texas’s case, twice the amount Marietta, Georgia gained. The cause? Developers focusing on the demand for one-bedroom units. Birmingham, Alabama and Detroit also shrank in the last decade, with their average apartment sizes decreasing 194 and 184 square feet, respectively. Other cities with notable reductions included Memphis, Tennessee (-176 square feet) and Fort Myers, Florida (-139 square feet).
Click here for more on RentCafe’s analysis of apartment sizes in the U.S.
