16 cities where tenants can score significant rent savings as apartment prices stay high

Renters shouldn't have difficulty finding apartments, but securing a deal is a different story.Busà Photography/Getty Images

• Apartments are as abundant as ever, but rent remained at record highs in October.
• Robust demand offset a substantial uptick in supply.

Record-high rental inventory isn't bringing down all-time-high apartment prices.

The median rent for one-bedroom apartments reached $1,534 in October, matching the peak price set in August, according to a new report from real-estate site Zumper. That's virtually unchanged from September's rate of $1,533, though it's 1.9% higher than the median price from a year ago.

Two-bedroom setups went for around $1,910 in the nation's 100 largest real-estate markets, only a few dollars lower than last month and 2.6% higher than in October 2023.

Apartment supply has reached unprecedented heights thanks to a surge in new rental units, Zumper found. Although that's kept rent from getting even more expensive, it hasn't brought prices in tenants' direction, as a recent report from Rentometer about third-quarter rent attests.

The explanation for this dynamic is straight out of ECON 101: prices have barely budged because demand has risen alongside supply.

While renting is expensive, many believe it still makes more sense than buying, especially since mortgage rates have experienced a resurgence lately. Besides, renters can evidently afford to pay up in a healthy economy marked by solid GDP growth, resilient consumer spending, a low unemployment rate, and strong job additions, which just hit their highest mark since last July.

"Sustained high demand can be linked to several economic factors, including low unemployment, easing inflation, and continued wage growth," said Anthemos Georgiades, the CEO of Zumper, in a statement for the report.

Even though rent is stubbornly high on the national level, there are several cities among the 100 biggest rental markets where apartments are increasingly affordable.

Below are the 16 markets where rent was at least $200 cheaper than the national median price of $1,534 in October and no less than 3% cheaper than it was a year ago. Along with each city are its year-over-year and month-over-month rent changes and its median rent, the savings compared to the national median, and its rank among the 100 top US real-estate markets.