Home Sales vs. Multifamily Rent Growth: Where Housing Pressures are Building

Dennis Lee
13 hours ago
2 min read

Updated: 13 hours ago

To assess near-term housing pressure, we compared 2024–2025 growth in home sales prices (condo, single-family) with multifamily rent growth across the top 50 U.S. metros.

Both metrics were converted into percentile scores, allowing markets to be grouped into four clear quadrants.

Quadrant Summary

🔴 Q1 — High Sales Growth / High Rent Growth

Strong demand, rising pressure

Sales prices and rents are both accelerating, pointing to tightening conditions across ownership and rental markets.
Examples: New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland

🟠 Q2 — Low Sales Growth / High Rent Growth

Rent-led tightening

Home price growth has slowed, but rent growth remains strong—often signaling supply constraints or delayed affordability relief.
Examples: Houston, Miami, San Francisco, Sacramento, Kansas City, San Jose

🟢 Q3 — Low Sales Growth / Low Rent Growth

Cooling and stabilizing

Both prices and rents are moderating, suggesting improving affordability and easing demand pressure.
Examples: Dallas, Denver, Austin, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, Salt Lake City

🔵 Q4 — High Sales Growth / Low Rent Growth

Ownership strength, rental softness

Sales prices remain resilient while rents lag, indicating diverging dynamics between buyers and renters.
Examples: Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Milwaukee

Key Takeaways

Markets in Q1 and Q2 face the greatest near-term affordability pressure, while Q3 metros show the most balanced conditions. Q4 markets warrant closer monitoring as sales and rental trends continue to diverge.