Rent by state: where it climbed fastest since 2015

Key takeaways

Arizona's median rent rose 72 percent from 2015 to 2023, $933 to $1,608 a month, the fastest climb in the country and roughly double the median state's 37 percent.
The top six cluster in the Sun Belt and the West: Arizona, Utah (+68 percent), Nevada (+66), Florida (+64), Idaho (+63), and Washington (+60), the corridor where population moved.
No state got cheaper. The slowest climbs still rose 18 percent (Alaska, North Dakota), so the spread is between fast and faster, not up and down.

What's happening

The chart draws an arrow through median gross rent for each of the 15 highest-rent states in 2023: tail at the 2015 level, head at 2023 (the statistic behind it carries all 50 states and DC). Every arrow points right. What differs is where each one starts: the coastal incumbents were already expensive in 2015, while Arizona, Nevada, and Utah reach the top 15 from tails below $1,000 a month, the fastest percentage climbs in the country at 66 to 72 percent against the median state's 37.

Level and speed are different stories. California holds the highest median at $1,992 a month but rose a middling 52 percent; Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho started cheap and closed much of the gap in eight years.

+72%

Arizona's median rent from 2015 ($933 a month) to 2023 ($1,608), the country's fastest. The median state rose 37 percent over the same eight years.

Where rent climbed fastest, and why it clusters

The six fastest-rising rental markets sit where domestic migration went: Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, the Florida metros, Boise, and the Seattle corridor. Rent follows people faster than construction does, so the arrival decade shows up directly in the arrows. The states at the other end tell the same story in reverse: North Dakota's 18 percent tracks the wind-down of its energy boom, and Alaska's matches flat population.

The middle of the pack is tight: more than half the states (27 of 51) landed between 30 and 50 percent, which is why the outliers on both ends read as signal rather than noise.

What eight years did to the map

In 2015 the expensive states were a coastal club: California, Hawaii, the Northeast, and DC. By 2023 the club has new applicants from the interior: Arizona climbed from 20th to 11th, Utah from 22nd to 14th, Nevada from 16th to 10th, and Idaho from 38th to 24th. Florida's $1,719 median now sits above New York's $1,561, and New York itself slid from 6th to 13th even as its rent rose a third. The Census Bureau published no standard estimates for 2020, and the arrows span that gap cleanly because they only need the endpoints.

What to watch

Whether the migration-state arrows keep their pace in the next ACS release, or whether the post-2021 construction wave in Phoenix, Austin, and Boise finally flattens them. Whether California's level crosses $2,000, a threshold it sat $8 below in 2023. And the ratio between income and rent state by state, which decides whether any of these arrows describe strain or just growth.

Common questions

Which state has the highest rent?

California, at a median gross rent of $1,992 a month in 2023, with Hawaii close behind. Median gross rent includes utilities; half of renters pay more than the median, half less.

Where did rent go up the most?

Arizona: 72 percent from 2015 to 2023, $933 to $1,608 a month. Utah, Nevada, Florida, Idaho, and Washington follow, all between 60 and 68 percent.

Did rent go down anywhere?

No. The smallest increases were Alaska and North Dakota, at 18 percent over the eight years. Every state's arrow points up.

What does median gross rent include?

Contract rent plus estimated monthly utilities for renter-occupied homes, from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. It describes the middle of the whole rental market, not asking rents on new listings, which run higher.

Data: median gross rent by state (US Census Bureau, American Community Survey one-year estimates, 2015 to 2023, all 50 states and DC), from the Kitegraph library. Each arrow runs from the state's 2015 median to its 2023 median, in dollars per month; the chart shows the 15 states with the highest 2023 rent, sorted by level, and the linked statistic carries all 51 series. The ACS published no one-year estimates for 2020, so every series has that gap; percentage changes quoted use the 2015 and 2023 endpoints.