Cities With the Cheapest Apartment Rent in America: June 2022

In the two years since the pandemic, rents have risen through the roof and many have stayed at elevated levels. Thankfully, that’s not true everywhere. There are many highly livable cities where rents remain affordable, and some with rents that continue to fall sharply.

Away from expensive big cities on the coasts, there are several categories of cities with cheaper rent. Many are edge cities and satellite suburbs like Baytown near Houston and Minneapolis‘ Brooklyn Park. Others are up-and-coming Silicon Prairie towns such, as Wichita, KS, Sioux Falls, SD, and Omaha, NE. But some of the best values are in big school college towns like Norman, OK, Tuscaloosa, AL, Lubbock, TX, and Ames, IA.

The cities with the cheapest apartments in the U.S.

The cities with the cheapest apartment rents are almost exclusively found in the Midwest and South. They’re clustered in states like Texas, North Carolina and Minnesota.

Among cities with over 50,000 residents, 21 have average monthly rents under $1,000. Nearly 40 cities of that size saw decreases in year-over-year rent, with 22 of them dropping over $100 a month.

Rent. looked at the average rent, dollar increase, and year-over-year percent change in every U.S. city with a population over 50,000 for a combination of one- and two-bedroom unit types. Below are several key takeaways from that data.

Takeaway No. 1: Wichita, KS, enjoys the cheapest average rent in the U.S.

Wichita is a bustling, modern city with a young, multicultural population of nearly 400,000. It also carries the cheapest apartment rent of any city in the nation by far.

The average rent for all apartment sizes in Wichita is just $598 a month. No other city averages under $700. This is the second year in a row the Air Capital can claim the title, increasing by just $33 year-over-year.

Wichita is also the largest among the 25 most affordable cities. Three of the 10 cheapest cities for renters — Port Arthur, TX, Stillwater, OK, and Grand Forks, ND – have populations under 56,000. The second-largest city in the top 30 is Toledo, OH, which ranked sixth with an average monthly rent of just $760.

The largest city overall among the cheapest is Houston with a population of 2,320,268. Ranked 99th, rents average $1,601 a month. Phoenix and San Antonio are the only others among the cheapest with populations over a million.

Overall, 21 cities carry an average rent under $1,000 a month. That’s down from 29 a year ago. The South’s cheapest monthly rent is in Lubbock, TX at $751, ranking fourth. In fact, all cities in the top 41 are in the Midwest and the South.

Albuquerque, NM, at No. 42, has the lowest average rent in the West at $1,156 monthly. The most inexpensive in the Northeast is Syracuse, NY at $1,261 a month, ranked 52nd overall.

Takeaway No. 2: The steepest decrease in average rent was in Saint Louis, MO

Among every city with a population over 50,000, it’s the Midwest gateway metropolis of Saint Louis, MO that has seen the steepest drop in rent prices anywhere.

The average rent among all apartment sizes in Saint Louis is $1,425 a month. While that’s still just the 76th cheapest average rent in the country, it’s a 27 percent drop year-over-year, or $528. Both those figures lead the nation. The city of 300,000 was the lone city to drop by over $500 a month. Bloomington, MN, was the only other city that experienced a decrease of over $400.

Several other larger cities rank among the largest decreases in average rent year over year. Cleveland, the 20th biggest city among the 100 cheapest, saw a 17.35 percent drop, good for the seventh-largest. Milwaukee, Charlotte and Indianapolis were the only cities with populations over half a million that enjoyed a rent decrease of over 10 percent. In all, 17 cities saw rents drop by double-digit percentages.

The city in the South that had the greatest decrease in rent is Lake Charles, LA. The Gulf Coast town ranks second overall with a drop of almost 25 percent year-over-year. Baytown, TX, had the fourth-largest decline at -23 percent. That drops the Houston suburb to the fifth cheapest rental city overall at just $756 a month. In all, 22 cities saw a monthly decrease in rents over $100, with nine of those over $200.

Takeaway No. 3: Texas has the most cities with the cheapest rent

Far and away, Texas is the best state to find cheap rent. Three of the 10 most affordable cities for renters — Lubbock, Baytown and Port Arthur — are in the Lone Star State. Texas fills seven of the top 20 spots, all with monthly rents under $1,000.

In all, an incredible 21 Texas cities with populations over 50,000 are among the 100 cheapest rents in the nation. By contrast, only three Texan cities are among the 100 most expensive.

Three different states, Alabama, Minnesota, and North Carolina, have six cities among the 100 lowest rents nationwide. Two Alabama cities — Tuscaloosa and Montgomery — come in under $1,000 a month. All but one of the six have increased from last year. In Minnesota, five of the six have decreased year over year. And in North Carolina, all six cities offer rents under $1,400 a month, as opposed to Minnesota, where only Rochester is under that mark.

Four of the top 10, and 11 of the top 20 cheapest cities for rent are in the South. Over half of the top 100 — 58 cities — are in the Southern region. Midwest cities account for nine of the top 20 and six of the top 10. In total, a third of the top 100 cities are in the Midwest.

Just six cities in the West fall inside the top 100, two are in Arizona and one each in New Mexico, California, Colorado and Oregon. Only three Northeast cities — Syracuse, NY, Pittsburgh and Erie, PA — reach the top 100, with Pittsburgh landing at No. 100.

The full list of cheapest places to rent

Overall, most cities with the cheapest rents are in the South and Midwest regions. Most of those are in Texas. But, if renters are willing to eschew the coastal big cities, there are many great options for affordable rents. Renters considering relocating can check out the full list of 100 cheapest cities for renters below and research available units and detailed rental prices at Rent.

Methodology

Rental data was pulled from Rent.’s multifamily rental property inventory for one- and two-bedroom units over June 2022 and June 2021. A single measure of price for all unit types per time period was calculated using a weighted average based on the number of available units. All cities with populations under 50,000 were excluded.

The U.S. Census divides the country into four geographic regions: Northeast (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont); Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin); South (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, District of Columbia and West Virginia) and West (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Hawaii, Utah, Washington and Wyoming). The top 100 cities in our analysis were determined by U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.

The rent information included in this article is used for illustrative purposes only. The data contained herein do not constitute financial advice or a pricing guarantee for any apartment.