Manya Rathore
Research expert covering India
Residential rental market in the United States - statistics & facts
Despite being widely regarded as a nation of homeowners, the United States has a well-developed rental market, with a growing rental housing stock. In 2025, roughly 46 million units in single-family or multifamily houses were occupied by renter households, roughly half as few as owner-occupied households in the U.S. The appeal of rental homes lies in their higher affordability and flexibility compared to homeownership. In the short term, renting is less expensive than buying a house, as it doesn't require a down payment. This makes it the go-to option among younger adults at the beginning of their careers or people with lower incomes.
The high cost of finding an affordable apartment
Renting is most common in dense urban areas with competitive real estate markets. Finding an affordable apartment can be especially challenging in these places, where the average apartment rent is consistently higher than the national average. In Hawaii and California, median rents for a two-bedroom apartment exceeded other states by a wide margin in 2025, with both requiring an hourly wage of roughly 50 U.S. dollars to afford such a unit. Massachusetts and New York were other states with high rents. While these states offer rich opportunities and higher average wages, this can fall short of covering the rent needed for a two-bedroom apartment. In Hawaii, for example, renters would have to hold about two full-time jobs at mean wage to afford such an apartment, and no state allowed a minimum-wage worker to cover two-bedroom rent on a single full-time salary.
Cooling rents, but not everywhere
While demand persists and investors' outlook is optimistic, rental growth has slowed from the levels observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 2026, the national average rent declined by about 1.65 percent year-over-year, yet more than half of U.S. states continued to see rental prices rise, with North Dakota registering the highest increase at over seven percent. Among major metros, San Francisco led rental growth, while Austin, TX, experienced the steepest decline as a wave of multifamily housing completions reached their highest level since 1987.
The U.S. rental market is poised to grow as homebuying remains unattainable for the average American. As of 2025, only about one in eight renter households could afford to purchase a median-priced home, down from roughly one in six before the pandemic. While the days of double-digit annual increases in rental rates have ended for now, growth in metros with housing shortages is expected to continue.
