In Denver last month, 71.9% of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom rental listings carried some kind of concession, the highest share among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas Realtor.com tracks. That works out to roughly seven in ten listings offering a discount that never shows up in the advertised rent. The number reflects a metro area still absorbing an unusually large wave of new apartment construction, and it puts Denver just ahead of Austin, Las Vegas, Nashville and San Antonio, the only other large metros to clear 67% in August.
Denver’s 71.9% Concession Rate Leads the Nation
The Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro posted a median asking rent of $1,771 in August, down 3.2% from a year earlier, even as many landlords layered a concession on top of that already-lower price. Denver’s combined rent decline and concession rate were both the steepest among the five highest-concession metros in the report.
Nationally, 43.5% of listings across the 50 largest metros offered a concession in August, up from 40.4% a year earlier, the highest share Realtor.com has recorded since it began publishing the monthly report, according to its August rental report. Austin followed Denver at 70.7%, then Las Vegas at 69.6%, Nashville at 69.0% and San Antonio at 67.9%; concession rates rose year over year in 39 of the 50 metros the report tracks, led by Houston, Cincinnati and New Orleans.
“Renters are entering the fall with more choices and more negotiating power than they had at the height of the rental market,” said Jiayi Xu, senior economist at Realtor.com. The report projects a typical seasonal cooling in monthly rents through the fall, with year-over-year declines likely to continue as new supply continues working through the market.
A Two-Year Building Boom Created the Backlog
Denver’s concession rate is less a story about renters gaining sudden leverage than one about a construction boom finally meeting its ceiling. Multifamily vacancy in the metro reached 9.09% in the second quarter of 2026, according to Moody’s data cited in a J.P. Morgan Denver multifamily market update, with rent down 3.50% year over year over the same period. Class A buildings, where most of the new construction landed, carried a 9.75% vacancy rate, compared with 7.92% for older affordable and workforce housing…