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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →The typical rent in the United States stood at US$1,932 in September 2026, according to the monthly market report Zillow published on Tuesday 6 October. That is 2.7 per cent more than in September 2025 and 0.1 per cent more than in August, on the company's Zillow Observed Rent Index.
The rent figures are one part of a wider release whose headline is about home sales: Zillow titled it around a fall in newly pending sales and what it calls an early winter in the housing market. The rental section tells a quieter story. Rents are still rising across the country as a whole, but slowly, and the share of listings that come with a concession has grown again. Underneath the national number sit cities moving in very different directions, from San Francisco, where rents are up 11.8 per cent in a year, to San Antonio, where they are slightly down.
The index is Zillow's own. Two other firms published their September rent reports a week earlier, and their national figures are flatter than Zillow's. This article sets the three side by side, each with its date and its scope.
Zillow, September Market Report, published 6 October 2026. Rent is the Zillow Observed Rent Index, in US dollars.
What Zillow reported on 6 October
The headline rent number has three parts. The level is US$1,932 a month. The annual change is a rise of 2.7 per cent. The monthly change, from August to September, is a rise of 0.1 per cent, which is close to no movement at all.
Zillow also measures what that rent means for a household budget. In September, it says, rent took 26.3 per cent of the median income. A year earlier the share was 26.4 per cent, and it was unchanged from August. In other words, on Zillow's measure, rents and incomes have moved almost together for twelve months: the typical rent costs more dollars than it did, but it takes no larger a slice of the median pay packet.
Related readHow Victoria regulates renting: 90 days' notice, bonds and valid reasonsThe third figure is the one landlords and leasing agents will read most closely. Zillow found a concession on 39.6 per cent of rental listings in September. The share was 39.3 per cent in August and 37.4 per cent in September 2025, so it has risen 0.3 points in a month and 2.2 points in a year. The two numbers have risen together: the typical rent is up 2.7 per cent while close to four listings in ten carry a concession.
Renting against buying
The same release gives the equivalent budget figure for owners. A mortgage, Zillow says, takes 34.3 per cent of the median income, against 26.3 per cent for rent. The gap between the two is 8.0 points of income.
Zillow's chief economist, Mischa Fisher, draws the link between that gap and the sales side of the report. In the release he says that buyers at the margin are finding the monthly saving from renting too good to give up. That is the company's reading of its own figures, and it fits the report's headline about fewer newly pending sales, but it is an interpretation, not a measurement: the report gives the two shares of income, and the conclusion about what would-be buyers are doing is Mr Fisher's.
For a reader in the trade, the practical point is narrower. On Zillow's numbers, the monthly cost of renting the typical home is well below the monthly cost of financing the typical purchase, measured against the same median income, and that gap was still in place in September. How it applies to any one household depends on the city, the home and the loan, none of which a national share can capture.
Related readWestern Australia's renting rules: rent rises, pets, bonds and noticeThe cities at the two ends
The national rise of 2.7 per cent is an average of very different local markets. Among large metropolitan areas, Zillow reports the fastest annual rent growth in San Francisco, at 11.8 per cent, taking the typical rent there to US$3,445. San Francisco rents also rose 1.2 per cent in the single month from August, twelve times the national monthly pace. Neighbouring San Jose follows, up 8.3 per cent to US$3,812, the highest of the Zillow metro rents quoted in this article.
After the two Bay Area markets comes Virginia Beach, up 7.1 per cent to US$1,886, a little below the national figure in dollars. Then a group of Midwestern and north-eastern cities: Milwaukee up 5.1 per cent, Chicago up 4.7 per cent to US$2,163, Cleveland up 4.5 per cent, New York up 4.2 per cent to US$3,546, Detroit and Providence also up 4.2 per cent, and St. Louis up 4.1 per cent.
Zillow, September Market Report, 6 October 2026. A selection of the large metros named in the release; the national figure is 2.7%.
At the other end, the weakest markets in Zillow's list are mostly in the South and West, and four of the seven are in Texas. San Antonio is the only large metro named with a fall, of 0.7 per cent, to US$1,415. Denver is flat at US$1,900. Houston is up 0.1 per cent to US$1,638, Tampa up 0.4 per cent and Las Vegas up 0.5 per cent. Dallas, at US$1,659, and Austin, at US$1,603, are both up 0.7 per cent.
Put the two ends together and the spread is 12.5 points, from a rise of 11.8 per cent to a fall of 0.7 per cent. A tenant renewing a lease in San Francisco and one renewing in San Antonio are, on these figures, in two different markets, and so are the property managers serving them.
Related readAustralia's capital city house rents stall at A$700 a weekTwo earlier reports show flatter rents
Zillow's is not the only September rent report from a data firm, though it is the only one of the three used here that is dated in October. Apartment List published its national report on 29 September and Zumper published its own on 28 September. Neither agrees with Zillow on the direction of national rents over the year, and the three do not measure the same thing, so their dollar figures cannot be compared with one another.
| Report and date | What it measures | National figure | Change in a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow, 6 October | Typical rent, Observed Rent Index | $1,932 | +2.7% |
| Apartment List, 29 September | National median rent | $1,388 | -0.4% |
| Zumper, 28 September | Median asking rent, one bedroom | $1,518 | +0.1% |
Zillow, Apartment List and Zumper, September 2026 reports. The three measures are built differently and are not comparable in level.
Apartment List's report, from its chief economist Chris Salviati and Rob Warnock, has the national median rent slipping 0.1 per cent in September, which it describes as the first monthly decline since January, and standing 0.4 per cent below its level of a year earlier. The report puts vacancy at 7.0 per cent, down from a peak of 7.3 per cent in February, and the time a unit spends on the market at 34 days.
Zumper's figures sit between the two. Its national median asking rent for a one-bedroom was up 0.2 per cent on the month and 0.1 per cent on the year, and its two-bedroom figure, US$1,903, was up 0.5 per cent on the year. Zumper also cites the Census Bureau's rental vacancy rate of 7.3 per cent for the second quarter of 2026. Its chief executive, Shawn Mullahy, sums up the picture by saying that there is no single US rental market at the moment.
The three reports disagree on whether national rents rose or fell
Over the year to September, Zillow shows a rise of 2.7%, Zumper a rise of 0.1% for one-bedrooms and Apartment List a fall of 0.4%. Each firm uses its own listings and its own method, so a figure should always be quoted with the name of the report it comes from.
Where the three reports agree
On the map, the reports line up far better than they do on the national number. All three show San Francisco rents rising fast. Zillow has it up 11.8 per cent. Apartment List names it as its fastest-growing city, up 26 per cent, ahead of Oakland at 16 per cent and Boise at 11 per cent, and as its most expensive, at US$3,878; the cheapest city in that report is Toledo, at US$916. Zumper reports a one-bedroom median of US$4,400 in San Francisco, up 25.4 per cent and a record, against US$4,580 in New York.
Related readDubai rent increases, Ejari and eviction notices: how the rules workThe size of the San Francisco rise differs by a factor of more than two between Zillow and the other two firms, which is another reminder that the measures are built differently. The direction does not differ at all.
The same is true at the bottom. Zillow's weakest metros are San Antonio, Denver, Houston, Tampa, Las Vegas, Dallas and Austin. Apartment List's steepest declines are in Garland, down 4.4 per cent, San Antonio, down 4.3 per cent, Arlington in Texas, down 4.0 per cent, and Las Vegas, down 3.6 per cent. Zumper reports falls of 17.8 per cent in Austin, 12.1 per cent in Houston, 11.9 per cent in Nashville and 10.8 per cent in Dallas. San Antonio, Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas and Austin each appear on at least two of the three lists, and Texas appears on all of them.
What landlords and tenants can take from it
For landlords, two further figures come from Chandan Economics, in a weekly rental housing briefing dated 27 September. It put annual rent growth in multifamily housing at 2.2 per cent in August, up from 1.9 per cent in July, against the 2.7 per cent on Zillow's own index in September, a different measure and a different month. And it reported that 83.2 per cent of tenants of independent landlords paid on time in September, against 82.8 per cent in August.
Read with Zillow's concession figure, the picture for an owner is of rents that are edging up on paper while more units need an incentive to lease. In the markets at the foot of the tables, the incentive may matter more than the asking rent; in the Bay Area, the figures point the other way. None of the reports says how large the concessions are, only how many listings carry one.
For tenants, the national message from Zillow is that rent is taking the same share of the median income as a year ago, 26.3 per cent against 26.4 per cent. That is an average. The share a household pays depends on its own income and its own city, and the gap between San Francisco and San Antonio shows how far a local market can sit from the national line.
What comes next
One date already on the calendar is a federal one. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's Fair Market Rents take effect at the start of the federal fiscal year, on 1 October, and HUD has posted its data files for fiscal year 2027 on its Fair Market Rents page. The figures in those files were not read for this article.
The data firms' reports are monthly. Zillow's 6 October release covered September, and Apartment List and Zumper published theirs in the last days of the month they describe, so the next round of figures, for October, would on that pattern arrive between late October and early November. The numbers to watch are the ones that moved in September: Zillow's monthly change, which was 0.1 per cent; the share of listings with a concession, which was 39.6 per cent; and Apartment List's monthly change, which turned negative for the first time since January.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
