March decline in rents is the largest since before the pandemic
Average rents in March were down 1.7 percent compared with March 2025, the largest year-over-year decline since the pandemic created more demand for apartments and drove a historic building boom.
The March decline was slightly greater than the 1.6 percent year-over-year drop in July 2020, at the height of pandemic chaos and a widespread flight from urban apartments, according to a new report by Apartment List, a company that posts rental listings online.
Eventually, the pandemic and housing shortages pushed up rents, as more people sought space for themselves and their families in suburbs and the Sun Belt, with year-over-year increases peaking at 18 percent in late 2021 and early 2022.
The metropolitan areas with the largest rent drops were Phoenix (down 5.8 percent), Austin, Texas (down 6.1 percent), and Sarasota, Florida (down 8.3 percent), according to Apartment List. One notable exception was the San Francisco Bay Area, where rents were up 15 percent.
By state, the drops were largest in Arizona (down 4.5 percent), Colorado (down 4.4 percent), Texas (down 3.1 percent), Florida (down 3 percent) and Tennessee (down 2.5 percent). Among the states that saw increases were North Dakota (up 7.3 percent), Delaware (up 4.2 percent), Mississippi and West Virginia (both up 4.0 percent) and Illinois (up 3.4 percent).
March is a busy month for apartment hunting, so the decline might reflect economic uncertainty that could keep rents falling as they have since 2023.
The situation is “challenging for operators trying to fill vacancies, but favorable for renters searching in high-supply markets,” according to the report. The National Association of Realtors also recently released homebuyer affordability statistics for February, showing affordability improving compared to 2025 nationally and in all regions.
However, the modest decreases still leave many renters burdened by housing costs, according to report by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies released earlier this month.
As federal resources dwindle “many state and local governments will be called on to take a larger role in efforts to improve affordability,” the Harvard report states.
