Average Rent by State: From $1,206 in Iowa to $3,612 in New York

Rent in America is not one number, it is fifty. The national median rent is about $1,951 a month, but that average hides an enormous gap: the typical renter in the most expensive state pays nearly three times what a renter in the cheapest state does. Below is the average rent in all 50 states, built from current market data across thousands of cities, sorted from most to least expensive.

The most expensive states to rent

The priciest rental markets cluster on the coasts. New York leads the country at about $3,612 a month, pulled up by New York City, followed by Hawaii at $2,923, California at $2,812, Massachusetts at $2,740, and New Jersey at $2,584. In every one of these states, the average rent runs well above the national figure, driven by dense job centers, limited construction, and constrained land.

The cheapest states to rent

At the other end, the Plains and parts of the South and Appalachia remain genuinely affordable. Iowa is the cheapest state in the country at about $1,206 a month, with West Virginia ($1,210), North Dakota ($1,215), Wyoming ($1,273), and South Dakota ($1,278) close behind. These states combine ample land, slower population growth, and lower construction costs, which keeps rents far below the coasts.

The pattern behind the map

The expensive tier is coastal and supply-starved, the Northeast corridor and the West Coast, where demand outruns new housing. The affordable tier is inland and land-rich, the Great Plains, the Midwest, and the Mountain and Gulf South, where builders can keep up with demand. The exceptions are worth watching: a state can have a moderate average rent and still be a strain on local incomes, which is a different question than raw price. We break that down in our look at the most and least affordable states for renters.

How these numbers are calculated

Each state figure is a population-weighted average of the median rent in the cities we track within that state, so larger metros count for more, the way most renters actually experience a state. Figures reflect current market data. State-to-state comparisons are apples to apples, though the absolute number for any one state will differ from a single-city or single-source estimate. To see the detail behind any state, open its page, for example Texas or California, or compare two markets in the RentDataNow compare tool.

Sources

Rent figures: RentDataNow, June 2026, aggregated across thousands of US cities and anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index. Population weights: U.S. Census Bureau.