A Flat National Rate Covers Up a Wide State-by-State Split
The Census Bureau’s Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership survey put the national rental vacancy rate at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, a reading the Bureau itself notes is not statistically different from 7.0% a year earlier. On its own, that number reads as a stable, slow-moving national market.
State-level data tells a much less uniform story. Data aggregator Innago, citing the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey, reports Maine holding the nation’s lowest rental vacancy rate at 2.5%, while South Carolina sits at the highest, 12.0%, nearly a fivefold spread between the two states. A single national average was never going to capture a gap that wide, which is exactly why a state-level view matters more than the headline figure for anyone sourcing landlord leads.
What a High-Vacancy State Means for a Tired Landlord
A landlord operating in a state near South Carolina’s 12.0% vacancy rate is facing a materially harder rental business than one operating near Maine’s 2.5%: more turnover, more marketing cost per vacancy, more months of a mortgage payment with no rent coming in to offset it. That gap compounds over time, and it is a big part of what separates a landlord who is content to keep renting from one who has quietly reached the end of their patience with the whole thing.
High-vacancy states and metros are worth weighting more heavily in a tired-landlord list-pull for exactly that reason, the math behind the seller’s motivation is stronger there before a single call gets made. VA Horizon’s callers treat that state-level vacancy context as part of how a landlord list gets prioritized before dialing even starts, not just an interesting statistic on the side, and an in-house SDR still qualifies each landlord who responds before the lead ever reaches you.
The Numbers
The national rental vacancy rate was 7.3% in Q2 2026, not statistically different from 7.0% in Q2 2025.
US Census Bureau, Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Q2 2026
By state, Maine held the nation’s lowest rental vacancy rate at 2.5%, while South Carolina held the highest at 12.0%, per Census Housing Vacancy Survey data as reported by Innago.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- US Census Bureau, Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Q2 2026
- Innago, "Rental Vacancy Rates By State (2005-2026)," citing US Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey data