These U.S. cities have seen the biggest rent increases since 2020
If buying a home today is financially out of reach for many Americans, affording the rent may also seem like an increasingly tall order.
In the 50 largest U.S. cities, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment climbed an average of $457 per month, or 41%, to $1,578 between 2020 and 2025, according to a recent study from loan marketplace LendingTree. Two-bedroom rents have surged an average of $505, or 37%, to roughly $1,858 per month over the same period.
Since 2019, rents nationally have risen 1.5 times faster than wages on average, according to a 2024 report from online real estate brokers Zillow and StreetEasy.
"If your income is rising at the same time your rent is, maybe that extra expense is no big deal," Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree, said in the report. "However, so many Americans' financial wiggle room is tiny, even in the best of times, so having to carve out hundreds of extra dollars to pay rent each month can be a big deal."
Several factors explain why rents have surged, said Rob Bhatt, a consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. Perhaps most importantly, during the pandemic legions of newly remote workers moved to new markets, driving up rent and housing prices.
"All the things that we saw during the pandemic have created stresses on the system, including stresses in these markets that traditionally haven't been renters' markets, and so it's going to take a little bit of time to adjust," he told CBS News.
High home prices and rising mortgage rates, which have kept a lid on the number of homes coming to market, have also left more renters competing for a limited stock of affordable housing. Rents are projected to ease nationally next year, but only by 1%, according to a recent study from Realtor.com.
Where have rents risen the most?
New York, San Diego and Miami have seen the largest monthly rental increases for both one-bedroom units — which rose $854, $817 and $764 in the three cities, respectively, since 2020 — and two-bedroom units, which have jumped $857, $877 and $885, respectively, over the last five years.
Rounding out the top 10 cities where one-bedroom rents have risen the most over the last five years, according to LendingTree (see chart below for a listing of the change in rents for the top 50 cities):
- Riverside, Calif.
- Tampa, Fla.
- Sacramento, Calif.
- Atlanta
- Orlando, Fla.
- Boston
- Phoenix
In New York and San Diego, the spike in rents is attributable mostly to the demand for housing exceeding supply, according to LendingTree. Renters in those metro areas face limited inventory and plenty of competition.
LendingTree attributed the surge in rental prices in Miami to the local population boom, noting that strong domestic and international migration to the area has driven up demand.
One high-priced city where rent increases have cooled is San Francisco. The cost of a one-bedroom unit in the city rose $54 a month, to an average of $2,977, over the last five years, while two-bedrooms rose $51 to $3,604, LendingTree found.
Other cities where rents are growing more slowly are Birmingham, Ala.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; San Antonio, Texas; and St. Louis, Mo.
LendingTree's findings are based on an analysis of fair-market rents (FMR) from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal agency defines such rents as "estimates of 40th percentile gross rents for standard-quality units within a metropolitan area or nonmetropolitan county." The firm's figures exclude rents for public housing and for units built within the past two years.