Rental Vacancy: No Rooms for Rent
- Nationally, the rental vacancy rate dropped from 8.2 percent at the end of 2013 to 7 percent at the end of 2014.
- The U.S. rental vacancy rate is the lowest it has been since the end of 1993.
- Grand Rapids, Michigan, has the lowest rental vacancy rate in the country, at 1.6 percent. Memphis, Tennessee, has the highest rental vacancy rate at 19.2 percent.
Not only is renting an apartment expensive (and expected to get worse before it gets better), it’s also difficult to even find a vacant apartment to begin with.
To help shed light on the challenges facing renters, Zillow examined Q4 2014 rental vacancy data from the U.S. Census Bureau[i] in the country’s 75 largest metro areas. Nationally, rental vacancy has been on a sharp downward trend since the third quarter of 2009 (figure 1). The U.S. rental vacancy rate is currently at 7 percent, the lowest level since the end of 1993, when it stood at 6.9 percent.
On average, the West has a lower vacancy rate than the rest of the country, at 4.8 percent. Among western metros, Bakersfield, California, has the lowest vacancy rate, at 2.2 percent. Bakersfield also had the West’s largest year-over-year drop in rental vacancy, falling 8.9 percentage points between the end of 2013 and the end of 2014.
But there are some areas with rooms to rent, particularly in the South, which as a region has the nation’s highest rental vacancy rate (9 percent). In Texas, the Austin, Houston and Dallas markets all feature above-average rental vacancy. And if your moving plans are flexible or open-ended and you’re not picky on particular markets, the state of Florida as a whole may be your best bet. Every metro we studied in Florida is at or above the national average for rental vacancy.
