Single-family rents across the United States inched up 2.9% in June compared to last year—a gentler pace than what we saw a year ago and just shy of where things stood before the pandemic, according to the latest from the Cotality Single-Family Rent Index. But dig past the national average, and the story gets a lot more interesting.
Cotality’s index is no back-of-the-envelope tally—it sifts through millions of MLS rental listings, covering about 75% of all stand-alone rentals across 17,500 ZIP codes. It doesn’t just take a snapshot of the country’s ten biggest cities; it tracks nearly 100 metros and divides rents into four clear price brackets. This is how Cotality catches local trends that might otherwise get lost in the noise.
Take Chicago, for instance: rents there shot up 5.7%—the sharpest jump among big cities and even more than famously pricey New York, which still managed a hefty 5.5%. Philadelphia and Los Angeles also stood out, both with 3.5% increases. But look elsewhere, and you’ll find the energy draining: Detroit, Washington DC, Atlanta, Houston and Dallas all clocked in below the national mark, while Miami was the outlier, notching a 0.5% drop as affordability and a cooling market took their toll.
How did things get so scattered? One word: supply. Local pipelines of new construction, people moving in or out, and unique local shocks—like the wildfires that slammed Los Angeles early in the year—have left some markets running hot, while others have hit a wall. According to Cotality’s deep dive, the boom in New York and Philly is partly fueled by buyers priced out of homeownership, funneled back into the tight rental pool and turning up the heat among single-family units.
Zoom in a little further, and the unevenness comes into focus. Cotality sorts the market into lower-priced, lower-middle, higher-middle and higher-priced tiers, each one behaving differently. Rents at the high end jumped 3.7%—up from last year—which tells you that demand for bigger, nicer homes remains solid. The story changes at the entry level. Here, rents barely budged—up just 1.7%, a much slower pace than in 2024. Part of that slowdown is thanks to a flood of new apartments and build-to-rent townhomes, making competition fierce for cost-conscious renters. The end result? A wider gulf between the luxury and budget ends—masking a more fractured rental market beneath that smooth national curve.
There’s even nuance in property type. Detached homes got a 2.6% bump, while attached options like townhomes and duplexes saw slightly less. Dallas, for example, saw rent growth slow among attached units, where an influx of new supply and competing multifamily buildings put the brakes on prices.
One thing that makes Cotality’s SFRI stand out: it doesn’t just shuffle new listings into the mix. It tracks rent changes on the same unit over time, patching in new data and revising its numbers with each release. That’s how subtle shifts, early warning signs, or reversals are detected fast—giving a window into where the rental market is really heading, not just where it’s been.
So while the headlines may talk about rental stability, Cotality’s broad, nimble approach paints a more honest—if somewhat fractured—picture. The landscape is patchwork: local supply booms, shifting renter demographics and diverging affordability are remaking the map, one ZIP code at a time. The U.S. rent story in 2025 is one of growth in fits and starts. Some metros are heating up, while others slow down and a widening gap between the top and bottom rungs of the single-family rental ladder.
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