Rent cuts are now a fixture of the multifamily landscape, but the pullback is not hitting every unit type the same way. Two-bedroom apartments are seeing the steepest declines, giving renters who need more space slightly more relief than those shopping for smaller layouts, even as overall prices remain elevated and renting continues to undercut the cost of buying across major metros.
Asking rents continued their steady slide in March, marking more than 30 consecutive months of annual declines. The median across the 50 largest U.S. metros fell 1.5% year-over-year to $1,669, according to Realtor.com, extending a prolonged cooling trend driven in large part by a wave of new multifamily supply hitting the market.
That easing has been broad-based across unit types, with larger apartments leading the way down. Studio rents fell 0.7% year-over-year to $1,410, while one-bedroom units declined 1.1% to $1,563. Two-bedroom rents posted the steepest drop, down 1.7% annually to $1,859, making them the relative winners in a market that is finally offering some discounting after years of rapid growth. Across all unit sizes, rents remain below their 2022 peaks but well above pre-pandemic levels.
Despite the recent pullback, the cumulative run-up is still substantial. Rents are roughly 17% higher than in 2019, underscoring that even a three-year stretch of annual declines has not fully unwound the surge that took hold during the pandemic era.
For renters weighing whether to stay in the apartment market or try to buy, the math continues to favor leasing. In March, the average monthly cost of purchasing a starter home was $920 higher than renting, a gap of 55%, across the top 50 metros. Renting is now the more affordable option in all of those markets, reinforcing its dominance in the current housing landscape.
That cost advantage is particularly pronounced in higher-cost metros, where the monthly expense of buying can be nearly double that of renting. These dynamics are especially evident in markets with large concentrations of high-income renters and elevated home prices, where staying in a rental—whether a studio or a two-bedroom—often remains the more economical choice.
The rent edge is starting to narrow, however. Over the past year, the cost gap between renting and buying has shrunk as home prices softened and mortgage rates edged lower. Buying costs declined faster than rents during that period, according to Realtor.com, signaling a modest rebalancing in the housing market even though renting still comes out ahead on monthly payments.
Even with those incremental improvements, the broader affordability challenge remains intact. Homeownership remains out of reach for many households, particularly first-time buyers facing elevated borrowing costs and high home prices, despite recent cooling. For now, that keeps more households in the rental market, where the distribution of declines across studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms shapes who actually feel the most relief.
Looking ahead, rents are expected to rise seasonally in the coming months as demand picks up, but annual declines are likely to persist as new multifamily supply continues to come online, according to Realtor.com. That suggests the market will continue to tilt in favor of renters overall, with the deepest discounts still concentrated in larger units that have seen the sharpest annual drops so far.
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