Where Rent Dropped the Most in the Last Year

The national rent narrative of the past year has been muddier than it sounds. Some cities have seen meaningful declines that are tangible for renters actively searching right now. Others that were supposed to be correcting are still rising, in a few cases sharply. The picture depends entirely on which city you're looking at, and the variation is wide enough that aggregate numbers tell you almost nothing useful.

Below is what RentDataNow's April 2026 data shows about where rents dropped the most over the past twelve months, which markets have softened across an entire metro, and where the unexpected increases are happening that most renters haven't been warned about.

The Florida Gulf Coast: Sharpest Declines in the Country

No region has seen more consistent rent declines than the Tampa Bay area and the broader Gulf Coast corridor. Six cities in this stretch are negative year over year, and the drops are the steepest in the national dataset.

Largo leads at minus 5.9% year over year, median rent now $1,778, one-bedrooms at $1,620. Largo also fell 2.7% month over month in April, meaning the decline is still accelerating rather than stabilizing. Cape Coral is down 4.1% to $1,931, Bradenton down 3.9% to $1,794, Clearwater down 3.3% to $1,928. Tampa itself is down 2.4% to $1,950 and North Port down 2.3% to $1,923.

The cause is a familiar combination: aggressive multifamily construction during the 2021 and 2022 demand surge, followed by a normalization of migration inflows that has left more units available than tenants to fill them. Tampa's median rent was $1,458 in 2021 and reached well above $2,000 at the peak. The 2.4% decline from April 2025 to April 2026 is meaningful, but the five-year net is still plus 33.7%. Renters who stayed through the surge absorbed those increases. Renters entering the market now are benefiting from the correction.

The practical implication: landlords in these markets are competing for tenants in a way they haven't been in several years. Concessions, free months, and below-ask deals are realistic to negotiate. St. Petersburg, down 1.6%, and Bradenton in particular have seen enough supply hit simultaneously that renters with flexibility on location within the metro have real options.

Arizona: Phoenix Metro Correction Continues

The Phoenix metro is in its second year of gradual correction, and the numbers are consistent across multiple cities in the area. Glendale is the sharpest mover at minus 2.2%, now at $1,528 with one-bedrooms at $1,206. It fell another 1.0% month over month in April. Tempe is down 1.4% to $1,683, Phoenix proper down 0.82% to $1,567, Chandler down 0.3% to $1,862, Mesa down 0.2%, and Tucson down 0.1%.

The consistency across the entire metro is what makes Arizona interesting. This isn't one city with a local anomaly. The supply wave built in response to pandemic-era demand has spread across the market and landlords everywhere in the Phoenix area are working through elevated vacancy. Scottsdale is the exception at plus 2.8%, its premium positioning insulating it from the broader correction, but every other major city in the metro is flat or negative.

Texas: Three Cities Falling

Austin is down 2.0% to $1,542, one-bedrooms at $1,226. The correction that began in late 2023 is still running. San Antonio is down 1.7% to $1,360, Houston down 1.1% to $1,541, and Corpus Christi down 1.3% to $1,414. Dallas and Fort Worth are still rising at plus 0.9% and plus 2.6% respectively, showing that the Texas correction is city-specific rather than statewide.

Austin's decline is the most significant in the state. One-bedrooms at $1,226 against a median household income of $93,658 produces a 20% rent-to-income ratio, the best of any major city in the country. For anyone who assumed Austin was permanently out of reach, the current numbers are worth revisiting.

Smaller Declines Worth Noting

Below the headline markets, several cities show modest but real softening that changes the negotiating environment for renters.

Savannah, Georgia is down 0.4% to $1,745, one-bedrooms at $1,435. Savannah has been one of the faster-appreciating smaller metros in the Southeast, driven by logistics and port expansion, and the modest softening may reflect the first signs of that growth rate normalizing. The rent-to-income ratio of 37% against a $57,137 median income remains elevated, meaning the decline hasn't yet translated into affordability.

Denver is down 0.3% to $1,826 with one-bedrooms at $1,874. Denver's multifamily pipeline delivered a significant volume of new units in 2024, and those units are now competing for tenants. The income base of $94,718 and a 23% ratio mean Denver renters are in a fundamentally sound position, and the modest decline improves that margin further. Month over month, Denver ticked up 0.4% in April, suggesting the floor may be close.

Raleigh is down 0.4% to $1,568, one-bedrooms at $1,292. Against an $85,395 median income and a 22% ratio, Raleigh is the most financially balanced major city on the declining list. The softening reflects new supply from the aggressive construction cycle of 2022 to 2024, and for renters who have been watching the market, it represents an entry point that is better than it has been in three years.

The Surprising Cities Still Climbing

The cities seeing the sharpest rent increases in 2026 are not the ones most renters would expect.

San Francisco is up 17.0% year over year, the largest increase of any major city in this dataset, now at $3,958 a month with one-bedrooms at $2,842. That's a stunning reversal for a city that spent 2020 through 2023 as a cautionary tale about remote work and urban exodus. The tech sector return to office, combined with a housing supply that was constrained long before the pandemic and never meaningfully expanded, has snapped rents back sharply. The five-year picture adds context: San Francisco went from $2,928 in 2021 to a lower trough during the pandemic years before rebounding to $3,958 today, a net 35.2% over the full period. The median household income of $140,970 produces a 34% ratio, which is elevated for a city with that income level and reflects just how extreme the recent appreciation has been.

Fresno, California is up 14.8% year over year to $1,900 a month, the second-fastest increase in the dataset. Fresno rarely features in national rental conversations, but the five-year trajectory shows a market that has moved 31.5% from $1,445 in 2021 and has not paused. The median household income of $70,991 produces a 32% ratio, meaning Fresno renters are being compressed in a market that doesn't generate the tech-sector wages that justify San Francisco's appreciation. The growth is likely driven by spillover demand from the Bay Area and Sacramento as renters search for lower cost options further from the core metros.

Reno is up 7.7% to $1,856 a month, following a five-year trajectory of plus 25.0% from $1,485 in 2021. Reno has absorbed significant tech sector migration from the Bay Area, with Tesla, Apple, and other major employers establishing facilities in the area. The income base of $80,760 and 28% ratio mean Reno hasn't yet broken into crisis territory, but the pace of appreciation is worth watching for anyone who moved there specifically to escape Bay Area costs.

Chicago is up 7.4%, Cleveland up 7.5%, and Pittsburgh up 5.6%. All three are Rust Belt or Midwest cities that spent years being cited as affordable alternatives, and all three are now appreciating faster than the Sun Belt markets that have been the focus of the affordability conversation. Cleveland's 41% rent-to-income ratio against a $40,801 median income makes its 7.5% increase particularly painful for renters at the median.

What the Divergence Means

The rental market in 2026 is not moving in a single direction. It's splitting along a fault line defined largely by supply. The cities that built aggressively in response to pandemic-era demand, primarily across the Sun Belt, are seeing rents fall as that supply delivers into a market where the migration surge has normalized. The cities that didn't build, primarily the coasts, older Midwest metros, and secondary markets, are seeing rents rise because demand never fell while supply stayed constrained.

For renters with geographic flexibility, the implication is clear. The declining markets, Tampa, Austin, Phoenix, Glendale, Bradenton, offer negotiating leverage right now that may not persist once the supply overhang is absorbed. The rising markets, San Francisco, Fresno, Reno, Chicago, are heading in the wrong direction for renters and the trend is unlikely to reverse without a significant supply response that isn't yet visible in the pipeline data.

The current year-over-year trend for every city in this dataset is on RentDataNow. Use the rent burden rankings to see where each city sits on affordability, or the compare tool to run any two markets side by side.