Rent Growth Is Slowing, Not Reversing
The Cotality Single-Family Rent Index, the successor brand to CoreLogic’s long-running rent-tracking series, rose 1.3% year over year in March 2026. That figure continues a slowdown that has held annual single-family rent growth in a narrow 1% to 1.5% band since fall 2025, a meaningful deceleration from the sharper rent growth of prior years, though still growth, not an outright national decline.
That national pace sits against a backdrop of a 7.3% national rental vacancy rate in Q2 2026, essentially unchanged from a year earlier, so the slowdown reads as a market finding a more balanced equilibrium between rent levels and available supply, not a market in obvious distress.
Chicago and Philadelphia Lead, Florida Lags Behind
National averages hide a wide metro spread in Cotality’s data. Chicago led the 10 largest metros the index tracks at 4.9% annual single-family rent growth, followed by Philadelphia at 4.7%, both markets where landlords still have real pricing power over the past year. Florida sits at the opposite end: 10 of the 16 metros Cotality tracks there posted outright rent declines, and Los Angeles recorded its own 1.2% year-over-year decline.
For a landlord holding rentals in a declining-rent metro, the math has shifted from raising the rent again to holding the line or losing the tenant, a real change from the pricing power landlords in those same metros had a few years earlier, and one that shows up directly in how ready a tired-landlord owner is to talk about selling instead of managing through another flat or declining year.
The Numbers
The Cotality Single-Family Rent Index rose 1.3% year over year in March 2026, continuing a slowdown that has held annual growth in a narrow 1% to 1.5% band since fall 2025.
Chicago led the 10 largest tracked metros at 4.9% annual single-family rent growth, followed by Philadelphia at 4.7%; Florida accounted for 10 of 16 metros posting outright declines, and Los Angeles recorded a 1.2% year-over-year decline.
The national rental vacancy rate stood at 7.3% in Q2 2026, not statistically different from 7.0% a year earlier.
US Census Bureau, Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Q2 2026
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.
- Cotality, "Single-Family Rent Index, May 2026"
- US Census Bureau, Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Q2 2026