It’s Only $5 Bucks, But Still! Single Family Home Rents Have Finally Fallen

As Planet Earth exits its hottest month ever, a lot of things are wilting, drooping, and outright melting—ranging from gardens to ice cream cones to (alarmingly) airport runways and museum roofs. Add one more unexpected thing to the list, says Dwellsy CEO and cofounder Jonas Bordo: single-family home (SFR) asking rents.

“Okay, okay…we can’t attribute decreasing rents to the temperature,” admits Bordo, coauthor along with Hannah Hildebolt of Everything You Need to Know About Renting But Didn’t Know to Ask: All the Insider Dirt to Help You Get the Best Deal and Avoid Disaster (Matt Holt, August 2023, ISBN: 978-1-6377439-2-8, $21.95). “But the fact remains that from June to July 2023, median asking rents for three-bedroom SFRs dropped 0.3 percent, or $5.”

Five bucks may not seem like much. But SFR renters, who have experienced many more price hikes than drops over the past few years, will take it.

“Heck, they’ll probably be excited to hear that year-over-year rent for three-bedroom homes has stayed flat since July 2022,” comments Bordo. “That’s saying something, considering that rent for three-bedroom SFRs has surged by 24.6 percent since January 2021, when Dwellsy began tracking this data.”

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. Some markets have seen SFR prices rise quite a bit due to increased demand, while others have a consistently high cost of living.

Bordo believes that providing accurate and timely rental data is a crucial service for renters, landlords, cities, and organizations connected to the rental industry. To that end, Dwellsy regularly mines its 14+ million residential rental listings for statistics and data. Because the rental platform allows landlords to post listings free of charge, it has a pool of data that’s more diverse—and more representative of the true rental landscape—than that of pay-to-play listing services. Each month, Dwellsy breaks down this data regionally across 250 U.S. markets.

“Without current data, it’s difficult for renters to accurately gauge developing trends, determine affordability in their area, and plan for the future,” says Bordo. “In compiling this list of most expensive cities for single-family home rentals, we’ve focused on three-bedroom homes because they are by far the most common rental home type.”

For a more detailed look at Dwellsy’s rent price analysis methodology, see this article.

Here, Bordo shares which cities are currently most expensive for single-family home renters:

Top Ten Most Expensive Large Cities for Three-Bedroom Single-Family Home Rentals

Will cash-strapped Californians ever catch a break? Not this month, says Bordo. Five of the ten most expensive large cities for SFR renters are located in the Golden State. That includes first-place Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, which had an eye-popping median asking rent of $4,073, up 1.8 percent since last July.

“Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Massachusetts also stands out because it has a year-over-year rent increase in the double digits: 10.9 percent,” points out Bordo. “Only Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Florida has something to celebrate. Renters there have seen a 4.4 percent price decline since last July.”

This table shows which large cities had the most expensive July 2023 asking rent for three-bedroom single-family homes.

About Jonas Bordo:

Jonas Bordo is the coauthor, along with Hannah Hildebolt, of the book Everything You Need to Know About Renting But Didn’t Know to Ask: All the Insider Dirt to Help You Get the Best Deal and Avoid Disaster. He is the CEO and cofounder of Dwellsy, the free residential rental marketplace that makes it easy to find hard-to-find rentals. Prior to cofounding Dwellsy, Jonas was a senior executive at several leading real estate firms including Essex Property Trust and BentallGreenOak, and was with the Boston Consulting Group after graduating with his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

About the Book:

Everything You Need to Know About Renting But Didn’t Know to Ask: All the Insider Dirt to Help You Get the Best Deal and Avoid Disaster (Matt Holt, August 2023, ISBN: 978-1-6377439-2-8, $21.95) is available from major online booksellers.

About Dwellsy:

Dwellsy is the renter’s marketplace: a comprehensive residential home rentals marketplace based on the radical concept that true, organic search in a free ecosystem creates more value than the pay-to-play model embraced by all of the current rental listing services. Dwellsy has more than 14 million residential rental listings—more than any legacy classifieds site—as well as the most diverse set of listings, including single family rentals, condos, and apartments. Dwellsy’s entirely different approach to residential rental listings focuses on presenting houses and apartments based on features renters need and want, not based on how much landlords pay to show their listings. Dwellsy investors include Frontier Ventures, Ulu Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Heroic Ventures, and the University of Chicago. For more information, please visit our newsroom or find your next home at Dwellsy.com.