There are roughly 23,400,000 apartment homes in the United States in 5+ unit buildings, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council's Quick Facts (January 2026). Of that universe, our live-listing dataset currently tracks 131,820 units across 9,561 properties in 1,135 cities, with the median asking rent sitting at $1,853 and the inter-quartile range at $1,470 to $2,465. NMHC owns the headline number for the apartment industry. We own the live asking-price view inside it.
The two answer different questions and that is the entire point of this page. If you need to know how big multifamily is, cite NMHC. If you need to know what a 1-bedroom is listed at this week in Cleveland, that is what we publish. The figure below grounds where we sit inside NMHC's universe today.
Live data snapshot
Based on 131,820 units in 1135 cities across 50 states and Washington, DC, as of August 24, 2026.
Side by side: NMHC Quick Facts and our live-listing dataset
The table below pairs each NMHC headline figure with the equivalent live-priced view from our dataset. The "what it tells you" column is the part most readers skip and most need: a single sentence on which figure belongs in which sentence of which document.
The industry-scale view: NMHC Quick Facts vs. our live-listing dataset
The National Multifamily Housing Council publishes the gold-standard industry totals: how many apartment homes exist, how many people live in them, and what the vacancy rate looks like across the whole 5+ unit universe. We track a slice of that universe at the unit-asking-price level. Both numbers are useful. Different jobs.
| Metric | NMHC Quick Facts | average-rent.com | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| US apartment universe (5+ unit buildings) | 23,400,000 units | 131,820 units tracked | NMHC counts the whole inventory. We track a live-priced subset, refreshed every morning. |
| Coverage of the NMHC-counted universe | — | 0.6% | Our share of the industry-counted universe at the unit-listing level. Grows daily as we expand into new metros. |
| Apartment renters (people) | 39,100,000 | not measured | Population-level counts come from Census ACS. Use NMHC for the headline figure. |
| National listed-availability rate | 5.6%
vacancy (Census/NMHC) | 8.6% 36,428 listed / 424,462 units across 1,727 properties | Census/NMHC measure vacancy: vacant units divided by total inventory. Our number measures live asking-listed share: actively-listed units divided by total units in the same buildings. Both move with market tightness; the absolute levels differ by definition. |
| Annual economic impact | $3.4T | not measured | An advocacy/macro-economic figure. NMHC owns this number; it has no operational analogue in a listings dataset. |
| Cities with live property-level data | not published | 1,135 cities, 50 states and Washington, DC | NMHC publishes national totals. We publish city- and neighborhood-level rents from 9,561 live properties. |
| Refresh cadence | annual + quarterly | daily | NMHC's number is right for citing in a report. Ours is right for pricing a unit this week. |
Use NMHC Quick Facts when
- You need the headline industry-size number for a report, brief, or pitch deck.
- You are citing an authoritative figure for the total apartment-renter population.
- You want a national vacancy rate suitable for macroeconomic comparison.
- You are arguing the policy or economic-impact case for multifamily.
Use Average Rent when
- You need a real asking price for a real unit you might rent next month.
- You are comping a specific city, neighborhood, or floorplan against the live market.
- You want today's distribution: the 25th, 50th, 75th percentile of what is actually listed.
- You need a number that moves day-by-day, not a smoothed annual figure.
NMHC reference figures last verified against the NMHC "Quick Facts: Apartment Stock" page in January 2026. Our totals are recomputed on every page load from the live D1 dataset behind /api/national/summary. NMHC and "Quick Facts" are trademarks of the National Multifamily Housing Council.
Where each source belongs
A useful framing is the scale at which a number is meaningful. NMHC's Quick Facts work at the country scale; they answer "how big is the apartment industry" cleanly and cite cleanly in a report. Our numbers work at the property scale; they answer "what does this floorplan rent for today" cleanly and cite cleanly in a renter or investor's spreadsheet. The seam is at the metro level: NMHC publishes some metro figures, we publish almost everything below the metro level, and our state-level rollup lines up with NMHC's state-level series in shape (rich coastal markets at the top, value Midwest and Southeast markets at the bottom) even though the absolute medians differ because we measure asking rents on listed units rather than averages across the full housed inventory.
Median rent by state
Sorted high to low. Showing states with at least 50 tracked apartment properties. Tap any row to open that state's full rent trends page with city-level breakdowns.
| State | Median | P25 to P75 | Properties | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $3,321 | $2,683 to $4,114 | 269 | 3,876 |
| California | $2,806 | $2,370 to $3,399 | 1,392 | 13,044 |
| Connecticut | $2,530 | $1,925 to $3,126 | 90 | 908 |
| New Jersey | $2,449 | $2,110 to $2,995 | 128 | 2,225 |
| New York | $2,324 | $1,750 to $3,489 | 243 | 1,931 |
| Illinois | $2,208 | $1,750 to $2,761 | 250 | 3,143 |
| Virginia | $2,191 | $1,795 to $2,700 | 228 | 3,587 |
| Maryland | $2,174 | $1,888 to $2,509 | 70 | 1,038 |
| Florida | $2,114 | $1,695 to $2,680 | 603 | 10,889 |
| Washington | $2,080 | $1,650 to $2,614 | 268 | 2,890 |
| South Carolina | $2,054 | $1,697 to $2,540 | 97 | 1,286 |
| Pennsylvania | $2,013 | $1,694 to $2,369 | 77 | 958 |
| Colorado | $1,997 | $1,700 to $2,445 | 276 | 4,674 |
| Nevada | $1,863 | $1,629 to $2,153 | 66 | 1,166 |
| Georgia | $1,850 | $1,533 to $2,357 | 399 | 7,014 |
| Oregon | $1,844 | $1,595 to $2,220 | 152 | 1,475 |
| Minnesota | $1,805 | $1,523 to $2,212 | 212 | 2,404 |
| Tennessee | $1,799 | $1,484 to $2,210 | 220 | 3,731 |
| Wisconsin | $1,786 | $1,465 to $2,278 | 94 | 985 |
| Arizona | $1,763 | $1,525 to $2,099 | 276 | 4,105 |
| Utah | $1,745 | $1,486 to $2,197 | 200 | 2,151 |
| Idaho | $1,702 | $1,553 to $1,985 | 62 | 472 |
| North Carolina | $1,696 | $1,429 to $2,014 | 371 | 6,575 |
| Kansas | $1,646 | $1,246 to $2,085 | 83 | 804 |
| Michigan | $1,615 | $1,315 to $2,009 | 193 | 1,315 |
| Ohio | $1,608 | $1,299 to $1,950 | 119 | 1,268 |
| Texas | $1,555 | $1,292 to $1,936 | 1,767 | 35,125 |
| Missouri | $1,534 | $1,365 to $1,880 | 155 | 1,627 |
| New Mexico | $1,495 | $1,225 to $1,830 | 171 | 1,477 |
| Indiana | $1,491 | $1,255 to $1,742 | 140 | 2,120 |
| Arkansas | $1,372 | $1,165 to $1,697 | 81 | 835 |
| Oklahoma | $1,349 | $1,150 to $1,600 | 115 | 879 |
| Alabama | $1,335 | $1,075 to $1,690 | 136 | 1,420 |
| Mississippi | $1,250 | $1,088 to $1,403 | 57 | 470 |
| Iowa | $1,224 | $1,000 to $1,487 | 123 | 618 |
| Louisiana | $1,190 | $968 to $1,641 | 85 | 812 |
15 additional states are below the 50-property threshold today. More states and data coming as coverage expands.
How our number relates to Zillow ZORI and RentCafe at the rent level
NMHC is the industry-size number; Zillow ZORI and RentCafe are the other two reference rent figures readers usually compare against. We publish a side-by-side against both. The gaps are not measurement error: each source aggregates differently, and the right gap to cite is the one that matches the question you are answering.
Side by side: our live-listing data vs. the big indexes
Every row shows what our 131,820 live units currently say, and what Zillow's ZORI model or RentCafe's Yardi feed said the last time we checked their public pages (March 2026).
| Metric | average-rent.com | Zillow ZORI | RentCafe | Gap vs ZORI | Gap vs RentCafe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US median asking rent (all beds) | $1,853 | $2,054 | $1,845 | -9.8% | +0.4% |
| Our figure is the 50th percentile of live listings. ZORI is a statistical estimate. RentCafe is a property-management database average. | |||||
| US median, 1-bedroom | $1,702 | not published | $1,721 | — | -1.1% |
| Zillow does not publish a national 1BR breakout on its public consumer page. RentCafe does. | |||||
| US median, 2-bedroom | $2,005 | not published | $2,072 | — | -3.2% |
| Same as above: Zillow keeps bedroom splits inside the report; RentCafe publishes a number. | |||||
What the ZORI gap tells you
If our figure sits above ZORI, the market of currently-listed units is richer than Zillow's modeled "typical rent" for the middle of the market. If it sits below, we are capturing more of the longer-tail, cheaper supply. Neither is wrong. They measure different things.
What the RentCafe gap tells you
RentCafe's number is weighted toward the Yardi-managed professional-apartment inventory. It tends to run below our median in markets where Class A purpose-built inventory is a smaller share of what is available to rent today.
Competitor figures last verified March 2026 against Zillow's public research page and RentCafe's national average apartment rent chart. Zillow, ZORI, RentCafe, and Yardi are trademarks of their respective owners.
How we calculate this, and where NMHC fits in
How we calculate this, and why it differs from Zillow and RentCafe
Every number on this page comes from a live asking price we collected from an apartment community's own leasing website, the same page a prospective tenant would see. We do not apply a statistical model. We do not survey landlords. We publish what is on the market right now, refreshed every morning.
Today that means 131,820 individual units across 9,561 properties in 1135 cities, including studios to 4+ bedrooms.
Zillow's ZORI is a model, not a listing
The Zillow Observed Rent Index estimates the typical rent for the middle of the market in a given region, using a statistical model that weights repeat rentals across Zillow's listing database. It is useful for long-horizon macro comparisons. It is not a count of actual listed units. A ZORI figure reflects Zillow's estimate of the market, not the raw asking prices available to rent today.
RentCafe's public chart smooths the movement away
RentCafe publishes a national average apartment rent drawn from Yardi's property-management database. The published chart reads as a near-flat line from mid 2023 through early 2026, which is an artifact of how averages and index smoothing erase the monthly signal. Raw month-to-month medians across live listings do not sit flat for two and a half years. If you ran a landlord portfolio, you would never price at the index.
NMHC Quick Facts is the industry-size citation, not a rent figure
The National Multifamily Housing Council's Quick Facts page is the gold-standard reference for the size of the apartment industry: roughly 23.4 million apartment homes in 5+ unit buildings nationwide, around 39.1 million apartment renters, and a national vacancy rate updated quarterly. Those are the right numbers for industry-scale framing. They are not asking-rent figures, and they update on an annual or quarterly cadence rather than daily. We pair the NMHC totals with our live-listing coverage on a dedicated page so the seam between the two is explicit. Cite NMHC for the universe; cite us for the live asking price inside it.
What you get here instead
- The raw distribution: 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile asking rents. Indices collapse this to one number.
- Bedroom-by-bedroom quartiles so you can see what a studio actually rents for versus a 2 bedroom.
- Live city rankings, not metro-level aggregates that hide intra-market variance.
- Unsmoothed month-to-month medians, including the outlier months indices normally average out.
- A refresh timestamp on every chart, so you always know how stale what you are reading is.
Zillow, ZORI, and RentCafe are trademarks of their respective owners. This comparison is offered as methodology context. Ratings refer to public methodology documentation as of April 2026.
Where to go next
Everything on this page is drillable. Pick a state from the medians table to see its city rollup. Use the interactive map to filter by bedroom count, price band, or neighborhood. Or jump into one of the related pillars below for a deeper cut on a specific dimension of the same dataset.
- What is the median rent in the US? (2026 data): the percentile distribution and 12-month trend behind the national median.
- How much does an apartment cost in America?: the same dataset, framed for a budget-first reader.
- Rent by bedroom count: studio through 3-bedroom medians side by side.
- Coverage map: per-city tier breakdown showing where our data is dense enough to draw conclusions.