Want to rent a single-family home? Here’s where it’s most affordable.

With the cost of buying a home financially out of reach for most Americans, a growing number of people are choosing to rent a single-family home. 

Nearly 2.5 million U.S. households have rented a single-family home in the past 12 months alone, according to an October estimate from the National Rental Home Council.

“It is generally less expensive to rent a home than to buy one, so for most Americans the path to homeownership starts with renting while saving for a down payment,” Yanling Mayer, an economist with real estate research firm CoreLogic, said in a report this week. “However, homeownership is becoming more elusive than ever for many people, as surging rents over the last few years have put an increasing financial burden on budgets.”

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The lowest-cost cites for renting a single-family home across the U.S. are in the Midwest and the South. Here are the most most affordable metro areas, along with the median monthly rent, according to CoreLogic.

• Cleveland, Ohio ($1,395)
• Jacksonville, North Carolina ($1,400)
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma ($1,595)
• Fayetteville, North Carolina ($1,600)
• St. Louis, Missouri ($1,650)
• Detroit, Michigan ($1,750)
• Fayetteville, Arkansas ($1,750)
• New Orleans ($1,750)
• College Station, Texas ($1,785)
• Tucson, Arizona ($1,875)

Of the millions of Americans who began renting a single-family home, most said they made the move because they wanted better housing, transferred to the area for a new job, needed cheaper housing or wanted to establish their own household, CoreLogic found.

Fully half of the nation’s renters today live in a single-family home, while the rest live in multifamily buildings such as an apartment complex or condominium, as well as in in mobile homes, according to CoreLogic. Renting a single-family home is the most expensive option of the three, with the median monthly rent tallying $2,600 as of September. Still, renting a place is cheaper than buying a home in most parts of the nation. 

Here are the nation’s most expensive metro areas for renting a single-family home as of September, according to CoreLogic:

• Los Angeles ($4,750)
• San Diego ($4,500)
• San Jose ($4,300)
• San Francisco ($4,200)
• Ventura, California ($3,925)
• Riverside, California ($3,250)
• Miami ($3,200)
• Boston ($3,000)
• Bridgeport, Connecticut ($3,000)
• New York City ($3,000)

Soaring homeownership costs

The costs of owning a home have skyrocketed in recent years, driven largely by a shortage of properties on the market and, more recently, surging mortgage rates. The typical American household needs an annual income of $115,000 to afford the median priced home across the U.S., which is $40,000 more than what the average household makes, according to Redfin. 

The median down payment on a home in September was nearly $61,000, the real estate firm’s data shows. That’s up roughly 15% from a year earlier, the biggest increase since June 2022.