Notable Trends
- One-bedrooms turn the corner: the median national one-bedroom rent rose 0.5% month-over-month to $1,526, and is now up 0.4% year-over-year, the first positive annual reading since May 2025. Two-bedrooms rose 0.1% month-over-month to $1,905, and sit just 0.3% below a year ago.
- San Francisco keeps rewriting its own record book: one and two-bedroom rents climbed to fresh highs of $4,060 and $5,700, and the city continues to lead the nation in annual rent growth at around 22% for both beds.
- The Bay Area boom is spreading: Oakland one-bedroom rent is up 6.2% annually, and San Jose up 2.6%, both lifted by the same demand pulling up San Francisco.
- Arizona rents remain soft: nearly every Valley market posted declining annual one-bedroom rent, except in Scottsdale and Gilbert.
At the top of the markets, New York City held the number 1 spot at $4,660, easing $20 off last month’s all-time high, while San Francisco extended its climb just behind it. The only movement in the top 10 came at the bottom: San Diego edged up a spot into 10th while Chicago fell out, and Washington, D.C. nudged down to ninth.
National one-bedroom rent returns to annual growth after a year of declines
The Zumper National Rent Index showed the median one-bedroom rent rose 0.5% month-over-month to $1,526, while two-bedroom rent increased 0.1% to $1,905. On an annual basis, one-bedroom rent is now up 0.4%, its first positive year-over-year reading since May 2025, while two-bedroom rent sits 0.3% below where it was a year ago.
The declines in the annual one-bedroom figures have decelerated for six straight months, and in June, it finally crossed into positive territory. After bottoming at -2.2% last November, the annual change narrowed to -0.6% in April and -0.1% in May before turning positive this month.
Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy explains, “The biggest story in housing is still supply. The national average hides what’s really happening: rent trends are diverging sharply by market, and the common denominator is inventory. Where supply remains elevated, rents are still soft, although the declines are moderating. Where supply is constrained, rents are rising—sometimes aggressively. The national rent index is simply the midpoint between those two realities.”
The market is nearing the tail end of the supply wave that reshaped pricing power across much of the country, and occupancy rates are slowly ticking upward as new deliveries drop off and recently built buildings work through lease-ups. Until lease-up numbers normalize and occupancy fully recovers, the grind will likely continue, but the direction of travel has changed.
The latest CPI data still tells the story with a lag: the shelter index rose 3.4% annually last month, remaining one of the stickiest components of inflation even as market rents have only just clawed back to flat. That persistent gap between official shelter inflation and real-time market rents is exactly why Zumper’s index offers an early signal into where the CPI may be headed. For a deeper look, read our full analysis: https://www.zumper.com/blog/zumper-consumer-price-index/.
San Francisco hits new records as the boom spreads to the East Bay
San Francisco continues breaking its own records. One-bedroom rent climbed to $4,060, and two-bedrooms reached a fresh high as well, now priced at $5,700, making both bedroom types the most expensive in Zumper’s decade-plus of San Francisco data. The city also leads the nation in annual rent growth, with one-bedroom rent up 21.9% year-over-year. No other major market in the report comes close.
The surge in rents has only intensified since spring. Aggressive AI hiring continues to refill the city, with major companies leasing millions of square feet, and office leasing running at its strongest pace since 2019. Return-to-office policies have pulled high earners back into the city center and the construction pipeline is nearly empty. Occupancy across the city’s rental units has also climbed back above 96%. The result is a textbook squeeze: surging demand meeting almost no new supply.
The Bay Area boom has spread to the East and South Bay as well. Oakland one-bedroom rent is up 6.2% annually, and San Jose up 2.6%, both pulled along by the same AI-driven demand lifting the city. Neither is rising as fast as San Francisco, but for different reasons. Oakland is still absorbing recent supply that’s giving East Bay renters options, while San Jose remains a steadier, already-expensive market where demand is firm but less frenzied than in the city proper. San Francisco’s near-empty pipeline is what lets its rents run the way the others can’t.
Arizona rents keep falling, but the declines are easing
Across the country sits Arizona, still one of the clearest soft-landing stories in the Sun Belt. Nearly every Valley market in our report posted declining annual one-bedroom rent in June, but the declines have moderated to mostly low single digits.
Mesa led the declines at -7.3% annually, followed by Phoenix at -4%, Glendale at -1.9%, and Tucson at -1.1%. The Phoenix area absorbed a massive wave of new construction; over 26,000 new rental units came online across the area last year, and vacancy climbed into the double digits as all that inventory worked through lease-up. With renters holding the leverage, concessions like a month or more of free rent have become common across the Valley.
But the trend isn’t uniform, and two markets are already pointing the other way. Gilbert edged into positive territory at +0.6%, and Scottsdale stood out with one-bedroom rent up 5.9% year-over-year. Scottsdale’s strength tracks with the tighter supply picture in its more established, amenity-rich submarkets, where vacancy has stayed among the lowest in the area. As Arizona’s construction pipeline slows into late 2026, the markets that have already absorbed their supply should be the first to stabilize, and Scottsdale looks like the leading edge of that turn.
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