Rental prices in some of the country’s largest cities are falling—some by almost 45 percent, according to new data from Five Star Cash Offer, a real estate investment firm that operates as a direct cash homebuyer. The dataset, which includes the top 65 metropolitan areas in the United States, reveals that cities that have recently enacted pro-housing policies have experienced the most significant year-over-year decline in rental prices nationwide.
The data from Five Star Cash Offer supports recent reports from online real estate brokerages Redfin and Realtor, which detail a decline in rent prices across some of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Sarasota, Florida, is the city with the highest annual decline, with a 42.67 percent drop (from $3,290 to $1,886) in average rent from January 2024 to January 2025. In recent years, the City Commission has adopted a series of pro-housing policies aimed at addressing the city’s housing crisis, such as the easing of restrictions on mixed-use and higher-density developments in 2022. In 2024, the commission passed several additional measures to relax density restrictions and allocated $40 million for affordable housing projects.
Providence, Rhode Island, the city with the second-highest year-over-year decline, saw a 19.22 percent drop in monthly rent, from $2,513 to $2,030. Some of this decline may be attributed to policies aimed at deregulating the housing industry. In 2023, the state passed a package of housing legislation to “address the long-lagging housing production rates” in the state by streamlining permitting for land use and land development and easing restrictions around repurposing existing structures for housing. In 2024, the city of Providence streamlined its construction application process.
The completion of multifamily housing units is also driving rent decreases in Austin, Texas, and Cape Coral, Florida. Across the U.S., multifamily housing construction has slowed from its pre-COVID levels, partly due to regulatory hurdles, high costs, and concerns about affordability. Yet cities with the steepest rent declines, such as Austin and Cape Coral, are notably issuing building permits at or above their pre-pandemic rates. Austin, fourth in rental price drops, issued the most multifamily permits nationally (64.5 per 10,000 people). Cape Coral, third on the list, almost doubled its pre-pandemic rate with 59.6 permits per 10,000 people…