Michigan landlords must now offer a fee-free way to pay rent
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed bills requiring a fee-free rent payment option and allowing electronic deposit refunds. In …
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The cheapest cities to rent in North Carolina, where the Triad undercuts Charlotte and Raleigh
Greensboro, High Point, and Fayetteville all rent for under $1,400 a month, hundreds less than Charlotte. Here are North…
One in five middle-income renters fell behind on rent last year
Missed rent used to be a low-income problem. New Urban Institute data shows it spreading to middle-income families, and …
How to actually get your landlord to fix something
Asking nicely works until it doesn't. Here is the sequence that turns a broken furnace into a legal obligation, and the …
Rats, no heat, and a water bill: why tenants in five Jersey City buildings stopped paying rent
Five west-side buildings are on rent strike over conditions their tenants say include rats and missing heat. In New Jers…
Your first apartment costs a lot more than the rent
The rent is the number everyone plans for. The three other cost waves are what blindside first-time renters, and they ad…
Nearly half of Ohio food bank households chose between rent and food
Ohio has some of the lowest rents in the country, and a new hunger study shows why that number is misleading. When incom…
HUD narrowed assistance animal rules, and most ESA advice online is now out of date
For years the answer to whether a landlord could charge pet rent for an emotional support animal was a clear no. At the …
How to calculate prorated rent, and the one method that quietly overcharges you
Moving in mid-month means paying for part of it. The math is simple, but landlords use three different day-counts, and t…
Police say rent checks were intercepted at a Georgia apartment complex, leaving tenants facing eviction
A Georgia case shows the rare scam a renter can't see coming: your rent gets paid, someone pockets it, and the eviction …
A third of Santa Ana renters live with more than one person per room. The 11 most crowded cities are all in California.
Rent prices measure what people pay. Overcrowding measures what they gave up to pay it. Our ranking of every big city by…
Judge orders New York City to turn over emails in lawsuit challenging historic rent freeze
The rent freeze that covers a million New York apartments is now a court fight, and a judge just handed the landlords ch…
The 3x rent rule: what income a landlord needs to see to approve you
The 30% rule is your budget. The 3x rule is the landlord's approval gate, and it's the one that actually decides whether…
At 7.17% mortgage rates, renting is thousands cheaper than buying in some cities
Home prices explain part of why people are renting. The monthly math at today's mortgage rate explains the rest, and in …
Military renters can break a lease without penalty. Most never use the right
Federal law gives service members a lease-termination right that overrides whatever the lease says about early exit fees…
RentDataNow's best big cities for renters
Most best-for-renters lists lean on cost of living and job growth. Ours scores three things a renter feels directly: wha…
$2,000 a month gets you less than a studio in New York and a three-bedroom in San Antonio
The same $2,000 a month buys wildly different lives depending on the city. It falls short of a studio in New York and re…
Two DC landlords will pay $9.3 million over alleged rent-fixing
A $9.3 million settlement over algorithmic rent-fixing sounds large until you see how much of DC's rental market ran on …
Every southern Dallas exurb costs more than Dallas, until you look at one-bedrooms
Renters heading south out of Dallas expect a discount. The median rent in every exurb we checked is higher than Dallas, …
When your landlord can walk in, and how much notice they owe you
A landlord owning the building does not mean they can come in whenever they like. Here is what notice actually requires …
Chicago rent growth is finally slowing after a blistering run
After a fast spring, Chicago rent growth is easing. Our downtown data shows the split, with Streeterville and River Nort…
Immigrant neighborhoods are still cheaper than their cities, but the gap is shrinking
Enclave neighborhoods have long been where new arrivals could afford a foothold. Our data shows all four still cost less…
85% of San Francisco landlords fear application fraud as AI made faking paystubs easy
Rental scams usually mean a renter losing a deposit to a fake listing. This is the other direction, where AI-generated p…
Detroit has a 22% vacancy rate and rent prices still rose 3.9%
Vacancy sounds like it should predict rent, and it mostly does not. Detroit and New Orleans have a fifth of their homes …
The AI boom is driving San Francisco rents up. City Hall is answering with tenant protections
San Francisco's mayor is declaring a rent emergency and backing tenant protections. The number that frames the whole fig…
Your roommate's unpaid rent is legally your problem. Here is what to put in writing.
Signing a lease with roommates usually means signing for all of it. Here is what joint and several liability actually do…
The insurance your landlord sells you at signing often pays them, not you
Plenty of renters sign an insurance add-on at the leasing office and assume they are covered. Many of those policies are…
Portland rent has risen just 20% since 2020, while most big cities ran away
Since 2020, Portland rent is up just 19.8% while San Diego climbed 45% and Chicago 40%. In a decade of runaway housing c…
Out-of-town renters are piling into Buffalo, Chicago and Houston
Zillow's out-of-town search data is being read as an affordability story. Run the destination cities against local rente…
Boston rent is falling while every other New England city rises
The one New England city getting cheaper is the expensive one. Every escape valve renters have used for a decade is now …
About the RentDataNow Blog
The RentDataNow blog is your go-to resource for understanding the U.S. rental market. Our data analysts and housing experts publish regular articles covering rent price trends, city-by-city cost comparisons, and actionable advice for renters and landlords.
Every article is backed by real data from our comprehensive rent database, which tracks median rents across thousands of cities and ZIP codes nationwide. Whether you're researching a new city to move to, tracking how rents are changing in your area, or looking for data to inform your next lease negotiation, our blog has you covered.
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