This COVID-era boomtown is suddenly the most affordable rental market in the US

When tech companies move in, rents have a bad habit of going up.

Recently booming Austin, Texas has managed to buck that trend. 

Besides a thriving live music scene, outdoor attractions, world-famous brisket and low taxes, the Lone Star State’s keeping-it-weird capital has something else surprising to brag about — low rents.

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That’s right — after a sustained period of significant growth, Austin has managed to become country’s most affordable rental market, according to Realtor.com.

Furthermore, the city’s generous rent-to-income ratio also ranked it third in a multinational study of metro areas, Bloomberg reported. 

The famously oddball city’s welcoming rental market has emerged from a period of intense in-migration and investment following 2020 lockdowns. 

Despite population pressure, Austin was able to sneak past Oklahoma City in September to become the country’s cheapest destination for renters, Realtor.com showd.

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Currently, an Austin family needs only spend 16.5% of their monthly paycheck on rent, according to the outlet and real estate portal. That’s down 2.8 percentage points from a year ago. 

A recent global list, compiled by DWS Group, ranked Austin third in an analysis of rent-to-income ratios across several continents. Austin renters, by the firm’s own measure, pass roughly 23% of their income along to landlords.

That ratio outstrips Brisbane, Australia, but falls short of first-ranked metro Salt Lake City’s 19.7%. 

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By any measurement, Austin’s rents are falling. 

The typical asking rent in Austin in September was $1,411, according to the report, marking a 7% year-over-year decline. 

Jiayi Xu, Realtor.com’s resident economist, said that the metro’s rental market has undergone the “largest rent declines among major U.S. metros over the past several years.”

COVID-19-era migration brought scores of new residents to Austin, turning the city’s housing market on its head. Major companies like Tesla and Oracle moved shop there amid pandemic-related dust-ups with California officials.

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The uptick in high-income residents and a limited number of rental units to house them resulted in a 25% jump in rents at the time, Bloomberg previously reported, and a rental occupancy rate nearly 92%.

Unlike other tech hubs, however, Austin has defied the odds with its steadily declining rents. The city’s success is largely attributed to concerted investment into condo builds and ambitious new housing policies that cleared up red tape.

In response to the rental supply squeeze in 2021, Austin city officials eased up height rules and parking mandates, as well as expedited the building permit process. Developers rushed in, and almost 50,000 new rental units were completed in 2023 and 2024.

The increased supply has helped bring down rent and flip the script between landlords and renters — with one agent telling Bloomberg back in February that nearly all Austin apartments were offering some sort of deal to new tenants.