CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released its latest Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI), which analyzes single-family rent price changes nationally and across major metropolitan areas.

National year-over-year rent growth is returning to pre-pandemic rates as prices continue to hold steady. In June 2024, prices remained relatively stable, posting a 2.9% gain year-over-year. Monthly increases have also tempered, rising 1.0% between May 2024 and June 2024, which is about equal to the average rental price gain of 0.9% year over year recorded between 2004 and 2019.

Although rental prices are growing slowly — this time last year, rent increases were 2.8% year over year — they continue their steady climb. Of the top 20 CBSA that CoreLogic tracks, eight posted gains above 4% and seven metro areas had median rents above $3,000. Nevertheless, as the U.S. unemployment rate continues to inch up and housing affordability remains near an all-time low, single-family rentals remain an appealing option for many households.

“Single-family rents have been bouncing around their pre-pandemic rate of growth of about 3% this year after growing by double digits for most of 2021 and 2022. At the end of 2023, they did slow to the mid-2% range,” said Molly Boesel, principal economist for CoreLogic. “While single-family rents are increasing at a stable rate, median rent continues to rise and has increased over $300 over the past two years.”

To gain a detailed view of single-family rental prices across different market segments, CoreLogic examines four tiers of rental prices and two property-type tiers. National single-family rent growth across those tiers, and the year-over-year changes, were as follows:

Of the 20 metros shown in Table 1, Washington D.C. posted the highest year-over-year increase in single-family rents in June 2024, at 6.5%. Seattle registered the second-highest annual gain at 6.1%, followed by New York at 5.4%. Phoenix (-0.8%) and Austin, Texas (-0.6%) posted annual rental price losses.

Methodology

The single-family rental market accounts for half of the rental housing stock, yet unlike the multifamily market, which has many different sources of rent data, there are minimal quality adjusted single-family rent transaction data. The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index (SFRI) serves to fill that void by applying a repeat pairing methodology to single-family rental listing data in the Multiple Listing Service. The rental listings used to calculate the index include both attached and detached single-family homes, as well as condominiums. CoreLogic constructed the SFRI for close to 100 metropolitan areas — including 43 metros with four value tiers — and a national composite index. The indices are fully revised with each release to signal turning points sooner.

The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index analyzes data across four price tiers: Lower-priced, which represent rentals with prices 75% or below the regional median; lower-middle, 75% to 100% of the regional median; higher-middle, 100%-125% of the regional median; and higher-priced, 125% or more above the regional median.

Median rent price data is produced monthly by CoreLogic Rental Trends. Rental Trends is built on a database of more than 11 million rental properties (over 75% of all U.S. individual owned rental properties) and covers all 50 states and 17,500 ZIP codes.