The continued financial uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s new tariffs is already taking a toll on mortgage rates but rents may also be headed up after being relatively stable for more than a year.
March’s $1,610 median asking rent in the United States was just a 0.4% increase month over month, and was down 0.6% compared to the same month a year ago, the nation’s largest brokerage website, Seattle-based Redfin, reported Monday.
In the Salt Lake City area, the median asking rent in March was $1,521, up 1.5% month over month but down 6.7% year over year. The calculations come from rentals that were listed on Rent.com and Redfin.com during the three months ending March 31.
Nationally, March was the 13th straight month that saw the median asking rent shift less than 1% in either direction, although Redfin economists have predicted an uptick in rents is coming as apartment construction slows.
Now, that trend could be ending sooner rather than later, according to Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao, given the effects of the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs on products imported by the U.S. initially announced on April 2.
“America gets a lot of building materials from other countries, so tariffs will make building apartments more expensive. That could further hamper apartment supply, causing rents to jump,” Zhao said.
She said the current economic climate could make would-be homeowners hesitant to buy, further increasing demand for apartments and making it even easier for landlords to charge more.
“People may opt to rent instead of buy homes because the turmoil around tariffs has fueled widespread economic uncertainty,” Zhao said, causing “huge swings in the stock market, and they will lead to higher prices for many goods and services, along with increased unemployment.”
The U.S. median asking rent reached a high of $1,705 in 2022, before new construction around the country boosted supply to the point where landlords had to lower rates because they were competing for tenants.
Thanks to an especially strong building boom in Texas, Austin saw the largest year over year decline in asking rent among the 44 U.S. metropolitan areas analyzed by Redfin, a 10.7% decline to $1,420 in March, $379 less than the city’s record high.
The biggest jump in median asking rent was in the Cincinnati area, where the year over year increase hit 12.1% as many of the new apartments being built are luxury units. The March median asking rent of $1,435, however, was also down 1.2% from the previous month.