High rents are consuming a growing share of Americans’ incomes, with more than half of renter families in the US considered rent-burdened as a persistent shortage of homes keeps housing costs elevated, according to Zillow.The median annual list rent for a two-bedroom home in the US stands at $21,480, while 54.1 per cent of renter families are considered rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 per cent of their income on rented accomodations. Among families with children under 18, the share is even higher, at 54 per cent, Zillow found.“While the pace of increases has slowed, rents remain at a high level relative to income, and the share of cost-burdened renters has held at around 50 per cent since the pandemic,” Kenny Lee, senior economist at Zillow and StreetEasy, told CBS News.The burden is particularly severe for lower-income households. More than eight in 10 renters earning less than $30,000 a year were cost-burdened in 2024, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.While land is available for development, construction has been held back by zoning restrictions and regulatory hurdles, Lee said. Those constraints have created a backlog of projects, particularly in markets where demand for rental housing is strongest.“Until those barriers come down, supply can’t catch up,” Lee said. “When you have a lot of people competing for too few homes, prices go up, particularly for bigger apartments that are already in scarce supply.”The rental squeeze comes even as the US has taken steps to increase housing supply. A bipartisan housing bill signed into law earlier this year is expected to encourage more construction, but experts say its impact will take time to filter through to rents and home prices.
Mendian rent in major US cities
New York is among the country’s most expensive rental markets, with a median annual list rent of $57,000 for a two-bedroom home, equivalent to $4,750 a month. The figure is well above the national median and amounts to nearly two-thirds of the city’s median family household income of $88,937.The costs are also steep in other major technology and coastal markets. A typical two-bedroom rents for $47,136 a year in San Jose, $38,400 in San Francisco, $38,340 in Boston, $37,740 in San Diego and $36,612 in Los Angeles.Meanwhile, Washington, DC, has a median two-bedroom rent of $30,000 a year, while Miami stands at $31,200. In Chicago, the figure is $25,800, compared with $24,120 in Denver and $24,708 in Sacramento.But high rent does not always coincide with the highest household incomes. In Miami, 67 per cent of renter families are rent-burdened, while the share is 68.8 per cent in Orlando. By comparison, 53.4 per cent of renter families in New York City are rent-burdened.The underlying problem is a shortage of homes. The US housing market is estimated to be short about 4.7 million homes following two decades of underbuilding that began after the 2008 financial crisis. The shortage has also pushed more households into the rental market, adding to competition for available homes.
