Rent costs are leveling off and even dropping around the U.S.

After a rapid jump in recent years, rents have begun to level off around the country. And in some areas, rents are even falling.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Here’s some good news for renters – the cost of keeping a roof overhead is no longer going through the roof. After a rapid jump in recent years, rents have begun to level off around the country. In some areas, rents are even falling. NPR’s Scott Horsley reports.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Elsa Marie moved to Tempe, Ariz., in 2022, near the peak of that city’s rental frenzy. Landlords were charging more than $2,000 for a house, and they wanted proof that Marie’s job in the travel business paid at least three times that much.

ELSA MARIE: I’m a single mom, and I do not make that money. So I spent about a good six months sending in application after application.

HORSLEY: Marie eventually found a place, but it wasn’t easy. Fast forward 14 months, though, and the hot Arizona rental market has cooled considerably. Marie’s about to move to a different house that will cost her less and says her new landlord was happy to make a deal.

MARIE: It is exactly what I’m looking for and right next to my daughter’s school, and I think it was all the timing. The market has been, like, stalemate. The houses have been sitting for at least three months. Landlords are kind of panicking.

HORSLEY: Rents around the country jumped by double digits a few years ago when the pandemic uprooted millions of people. Remote workers and retirees flocked to Sun Belt cities like Phoenix, Atlanta, Orlando and Charlotte. Rising rents also attracted builders to those cities. And it took time, but the supply of housing is now catching up to demand. Kim Betancourt, who tracks the rental market for Fannie Mae, says at least half a million new apartments opened their doors last year with many more in the pipeline.

KIM BETANCOURT: Right now, underway – what I call holes in the ground, cranes in the sky – a million…