US Rents Decline Marginally in March

Austin, Texas, saw the largest decline, with rents dropping by more than 10 percent, followed by San Diego and Portland, Oregon.

A home for sale in San Anselmo, Calif., on March 22, 2023. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Rents across the United States fell slightly in March on an annual basis, although prices are potentially set up to jump in the future because of limited construction, according to real estate brokerage Redfin.

“The median U.S. asking price fell 0.6 percent year over year to $1,610 in March,” the company said in an April 14 statement.

“Asking rents have stabilized below their 2022 record high of $1,705.

“March marked the 13th-straight month in which asking rents barely decreased or increased, with a year-over-year change of less than 1 percent during each of those months.”

Among the 44 major metropolitan areas analyzed by the brokerage, Austin, Texas, saw the biggest year-over-year percentage decline in rent at 10.7 percent. This was followed by San Diego; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Redfin attributed the large decline in rent in Austin to Texas’s being a top homebuilder during the COVID-19 pandemic boom. With the recent decline in rental costs, Austin is no longer Texas’s most expensive large city for renters.

“During the pandemic moving frenzy, rents skyrocketed because there weren’t enough apartments to meet surging demand. Builders then ramped up construction, which caused rents to fall in 2023 and early 2024 because landlords were competing for tenants,” Redfin said.

“There are still a lot of newly built apartments coming on the market, which is keeping rent growth at bay. But renter demand is strong due to high homebuying costs, which means rent declines are also limited—for now.”

Economists at Redfin suggested that rents may tick up again because construction of new apartments is slowing down, which would reduce supply and entice landlords to raise rental prices.

Chen Zhao, the company’s economics research lead, suggested that U.S. tariffs could make building apartments more costly because the United States purchases a lot of building materials from other nations.

The United States had imposed 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Later, a reciprocal tariff was instituted globally, though subsequently paused temporarily. Canada and Mexico were exempted in that round. Buddy Hughes, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), welcomed this decision.

“NAHB is pleased President Trump recognized the importance of critical construction inputs for housing and chose to continue current exemptions for Canadian and Mexican products, with a specific exemption for lumber from any new tariffs at this time,” Hughes said.

According to NAHB, Canada contributes about 85 percent of all U.S. softwood lumber imports and accounts for almost one-quarter of the available supply in the United States. Meanwhile, Mexico is a major supplier of concrete, gypsum, and near-shored appliances.

Renters Under Pressure

Rental costs over the past four years have surged, putting financial pressure on renters.

According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the consumer price index of primary residence rent in the United States rose by nearly 25 percent between March 2021 and March 2025.

A recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition states that the lowest-income renters in the United States have faced a long-standing “systemic shortage” of affordable housing.

It estimates that the country’s 10.9 million low-income renter households face a shortage of 7.1 million affordable and available rental properties, which results in only 35 such homes available for every 100 of these households.

“Eighty-seven percent of extremely low-income renters are cost-burdened, and 75 percent are severely cost-burdened. Extremely low-income renters account for about a quarter of all renters, 43 percent of all cost-burdened renters, and 68 percent of all severely cost-burdened renters,” the report stated.

“More than 90 percent of extremely low-income renters are either in the labor force, are seniors, have a disability, are in school, or are single adult caregivers.”

In March, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced a joint task force to tackle America’s housing crisis.

The task force aims to use underutilized federal lands to boost the housing supply. In a March 17 post on social media platform X, Turner highlighted that the country needs 7 million affordable homes and that the Interior Department owns one-fifth of the United States’ landmass.

In a forecast published on March 18, real estate marketplace Zillow predicted that single-family rents would jump by 3.6 percent this year and that multifamily rents would rise by 2.5 percent.

“With a slowdown in apartment construction and an uptick in single-family home development, the gap between single-family and multifamily rents is likely to narrow,” it stated.