The authoritative report on US rent data
Original analysis on apartment asking prices, built on live listings from 6,319 properties in 810 cities. No statistical models. No flat-line indices. Just the raw numbers, refreshed every morning.
Pick a state, see the rent trend
Every shaded state has live listings in our dataset. Click one to open its state-wide rent trend, bedroom breakdown, and city rankings.
Industry context
The National Multifamily Housing Council counts ~23.4M apartment homes in 5+ unit buildings nationwide. Our live-listing dataset covers 0.4% of that universe at the asking-price level today.
Updated monthly
The US National Rent Report
One page, refreshed every month: the national median, the most expensive and cheapest markets, rent by bedroom, and the year-over-year move. Free to cite with attribution.
How many apartments are in the US? Industry totals and live-listing coverage
NMHC Quick Facts puts the US apartment universe at ~23.4M units in 5+ unit buildings. We track 90,104 of them at the live asking-price level across 810 cities, refreshed every morning. The page pairs each industry headline with its live-listing analogue and tells you when to cite each.
Industry universe: 23,400,000 units (NMHC) | Our live coverage: 90,104 (0.4%)
Rent by bedroom count: studios, 1, 2, and 3-bedroom apartments compared
Median asking rents by bedroom count from 90,104 live listings. Two surprises in the data: 3-bedroom median sits below 2-bedroom, and studios beat 1-bedrooms on the median but lose on the mean. With per-room cost breakdown and salary requirements.
Studio: $1,655 | 1BR: $1,665 | 2BR: $1,993 | 3BR: $2,230
Salary needed to afford rent (2026 by bedroom and city)
What you need to earn to rent the typical US apartment without exceeding the federal 30% cost-burdened threshold. Bedroom-by-bedroom and city-by-city income requirements computed live from 90,104 listings.
Median rent $1,812 requires $72,480 annual income at the 30% rule
What is the median rent in the US? (2026 data)
Live asking-rent data from 90,104 units across 6,319 apartment properties in 810 cities. Raw percentile distribution, bedroom medians, state rankings, and the 12-month trend line that index publishers smooth away.
National median asking rent: $1,812
How much does an apartment cost in America? (2026 breakdown)
Real apartment prices from 90,104 live US listings. Studio through 3-bedroom medians, how much you need to earn to rent each, and the cheapest and most expensive markets tracked right now.
Median 1BR: $1,665 | Median 2BR: $1,993
Why our research is different
The National Multifamily Housing Council is the gold-standard citation for industry-scale figures: total apartment universe, total renter population, national vacancy. Zillow's ZORI is a statistical model estimating market-wide rents. RentCafe's public charts pull from Yardi industry indices that smooth away month-to-month movement. Our reports publish the raw asking-price distribution from 90,104 live listings, including the tails, gaps, and outliers those sources collapse into a single number.
Cite NMHC for the universe. Cite us for the live asking price inside it. The industry-totals page pairs each NMHC headline with its live-listing analogue. The coverage map shows where our data is dense enough to draw conclusions from.