This City Has the Cheapest Rents in America
A Realtor.com analysis reveals that this city in the South had the cheapest average rent in December.
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Home prices in America rose about 20% nationwide last year, compared to 2020. In some cities, the pace was double that. The increase was driven by low mortgage rates and a desire of people to leave large cities with expensive home prices to others where the median price of a home is lower. The migration also has been made possible by the fact that millions of Americans now work from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rents rose rapidly last year too. The median asking price for apartments with zero to two bedrooms averaged an increase of 10.1%. The December figure reported by Realtor.com was much greater at 19.3% in the same month of 2020. This pushed the monthly median rental figure across America’s 50 largest cities to $1,781.
The rental figure varied based on the size of the apartment. For December, the report showed: “Studio: $1,462, up 18.6% ($230) year-over-year; 1-bed: $1,651, up 19.3% ($267); 2-bed: $2,003, up 19.1% ($320).”
In three markets, rents rose over 30% in December from the same month in 2020. These were Miami at 49.8% to $2,850, Tampa at 35.0% to $2,038 and Orlando at 34.1% to $1,807.
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The study also showed the median rent by city for December and covered all 50 cities. The lowest figure was Oklahoma City at $949, which was up 15.7%. No other city had a monthly rent figure of less than $1,000.
These are the 20 cities with the lowest rents:
| City | Rent | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma City, Okla. | $949 | 15.7% |
| Louisville, Ky. | $1,181 | 16.2% |
| Kansas City, Mo. | $1,225 | 11.2% |
| Indianapolis, Ind. | $1,226 | 12.0% |
| Columbus, Ohio | $1,247 | 14.1% |
| Birmingham, Ala. | $1,249 | 22.2% |
| St. Louis, Mo. | $1,262 | 9.7% |
| San Antonio, Texas | $1,306 | 19.4% |
| Memphis, Tenn. | $1,324 | 29.4% |
| Rochester, N.Y. | $1,333 | 11.1% |
| Cleveland, Ohio | $1,352 | 16.9% |
| Houston, Texas | $1,389 | 15.9% |
| Cincinnati, Ohio | $1,400 | 15.9% |
| Detroit, Mich. | $1,400 | 12.1% |
| Richmond, Va. | $1,419 | 18.2% |
| Buffalo, N.Y. | $1,435 | 20.1% |
| Pittsburgh, Pa. | $1,500 | 18.5% |
| Virginia Beach, Va. | $1,503 | 18.1% |
| Milwaukee, Wis. | $1,527 | 11.0% |
| Raleigh, N.C. | $1,532 | 23.6% |
Click here to see the cities where buying a home is most expensive.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
