May 2025 Avg. Rent, Days on Market, Rental Inventory by Market

[Matt Thelen]

Hey folks, I’m Matt | Nomad (landlord & data nerd) — sharing numbers. Pulled these from Zillow’s rental feed for May 2025 and cleaned them up so we can see which markets are heating up or cooling off.

Quick takeaways

• Most expensive rents: Boston & Miami hit ~$3,000; NYC right behind at $2,885.

• Fastest to lease: Cheyenne (24 DOM), Salt Lake City (28), Providence & Milwaukee (34).

• Slowest: Hawaii statewide (97 DOM), Dallas (77), Atlanta (71), San Francisco (70).

• Biggest MoM improvement: Raleigh -44 % DOM, Boston -38 %, Cheyenne -27 %.

• Largest inventory jumps: Los Angeles (+4,535 listings MoM), Chicago (+2,344), Houston (+1,696).

Snapshot of key metros

City	Avg Rent	Avg DOM	MoM DOM Δ	Active Rentals	MoM Inventory Δ
Phoenix, AZ	$1,850	47	+2 %	5,052	+1,005
Denver, CO	$1,920	41	-5 %	3,924	+614
Miami, FL	$3,000	50	-2 %	6,534	+1,024
Orlando, FL	$1,902	42	-11 %	3,208	+569
Atlanta, GA	$1,900	71	-9 %	4,081	+637
Charlotte, NC	$1,935	46	-22 %	3,574	+456
Raleigh, NC	$1,750	45	-44 %	1,976	+399
Austin, TX	$1,894	48	-16 %	5,879	+1,066
Dallas, TX	$1,600	77	-5 %	3,782	+1,065
Houston, TX	$1,695	56	-2 %	8,823	+1,696
Seattle, WA	$1,800	47	-15 %	4,071	+819
Los Angeles, CA	$2,300	55	+6 %	20,265	+4,535
San Francisco, CA	$2,655	70	-26 %	2,783	+580
Boston, MA	$3,000	56	-38 %	17,529	-275
Cheyenne, WY	$1,500	24	-27 %	181	-5

(I trimmed the full dataset for readability — happy to share the whole CSV if anyone wants to dig deeper.)

Questions for you:

1. -Do these days-on-market (DOM) numbers line up with what you’re seeing on the ground? Faster? Slower?

2. -In your market, is higher inventory translating to better tenant quality or just longer lease-up times?

3. -Any tactics you’re using this season (rent incentives, flexible move-in dates, etc.) that are actually working?

Looking forward to comparing notes. I’m always hunting for better signals on when to drop price vs. hold firm.

PS: I co-founded Nomad, a rent-guarantee platform for small landlords. Mentioning for transparency — no links or pitches here.

[Marcus Auerbach]

Yeah that tracks. 

Milwaukee has a chronic housing shortage with no end (change) in sight and that drives both sales and rents. 

According to RentCafe Milwaukee was the third most competitive market to rent (ahead of markets NY, LA, SF..) last year and we see it here on the ground with our own lease ups. 

And according to Redfin Milwaukee had the highest appreciation of any US metro in the US in February - but I have to say that was an outlier month, if you look at Q1 data, it's not that extreme.