Gallery: Top 10 least expensive American metro areas

After a tumultuous few years, rent is still on the rise in metro areas across the country, but its growth nationwide is slowing. January marked the 12th month in a row that growing rent prices slowed. But while the average cost of rent is slowing overall, it’s still growing quickly in some of the nation’s least expensive rental markets, like Indiapolis, Ind., Birmingham, Ala. and Columbus, Ohio.

Last month, “the U.S. rental market experienced single-digit growth for the sixth month in a row after twelve months of slowing from January’s peak 16.2% growth,” according to a rental report from Realtor.com.

The median rate for rent is going down for a few reasons. In markets with rent under $1,300, mostly clustered in the Midwest, an increasingly affordable for-sale market is tipping the scale in favor of homeownership over renting. 

“Data suggest that many households in these affordable markets choose to buy when considering living arrangements. Six of these metros have higher than national average homeownership rates (65.9% nationwide),” the report says. 

Even so, the least expensive rental metros are still seeing a growth in rental rates.

“In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average rental vacancy rate across these ten least expensive markets was 7.6%—a significant drop from the 9.7%,” the report says. “As a result, we see Indianapolis, Ind. (10.5%), Birmingham, Ala. (8.8%), Columbus, Ohio (8.3%), Kansas City, Mo.-Kan. (8.2%), Cleveland, Ohio (7.1%) and Rochester, N.Y. (6.2%) among the top 10 metros that experienced the fastest year-over-year growth in January 2023, raising further affordability concerns.”

View the gallery above for a complete list of the 10 least expensive U.S. metro areas.