Alexandria’s apartment rental market is moving into the cooler stage of the year, and rental rates are down slightly from a year ago.
The city saw a median apartment rental rate of $2,193 — $2,008 for one-bedroom units and $2,467 for two bedrooms — in September, according to data reported Sept. 29 by Apartment List.
That’s down slightly from the overall median rate of $2,235 reported a year before.
The 2026 market has followed cyclical norms, with growth heading into spring and summer and cooler conditions the remainder of the year.
Last December, the city market hit its annual bottoming out at a median $2,151 before starting the growth pattern again. The median apartment rental rate grew to $2,233 in May before beginning to ease slightly.
The return of cyclical norms over the past two years is a sign the market, both locally and nationally, has pushed beyond the Covid era.
In Alexandria, the median apartment rate was $1,921 in March 2020, just before the pandemic roared in.
By January 2021, the median had declined to $1,746 as many local renters moved out either for economic reasons or because new work-from-home opportunities did not require them to be tied to a specific area.
The rebound began in early 2021 and continued unabated before peaking at $2,305 in June 2025.
Elsewhere in the local area, median apartment rents in September stood at $2,610 in Arlington and $2,357 in Fairfax County. Within Fairfax County, median rents in specific communities included $2,653 in Tysons, $2,184 in Annandale and $2,389 in Reston.
Across the D.C. metro area, the median rent of $2,171 in September was down 0.6% year over year.
Among 100 large urban areas watched by Apartment List analysts, the four most pricey localities for September all were in California: San Francisco, with a median rental cost of $3,878; San Jose, $3,154; Irvine, $3,132; and Fremont, $2,986.
Fifth on the list was Arlington.
The most affordable communities among the 100 were Toledo, Ohio ($916), Cleveland ($1,025) and Wichita, Kan. ($1,029).
Across the D.C. metro area, the median rent of $2,171 in September was down 0.6% year over year.
Nationally, the median apartment cost for September was $1,388, representing a slight decline.
“Rents are still down 0.4% compared to one year ago, but year-over-year rent growth has been steadily inching up and the vacancy rate is moving down, signaling a gradual tightening of rental market conditions,” Apartment List analysts said.
According to the analysts:
“In recent years, the shift into the off-season has happened earlier than normal amid soft market conditions, beginning in August in each of the past three years. 2026 bucked that trend and is the first year since 2022 that we saw positive rent growth in August. And even though rents have now dipped in September, that decline was notably more subdued than what we have seen not just in recent years, but also than what we saw in the pre-pandemic years when the market was well-balanced.”
The national multifamily vacancy rate for apartments was 7% in September, continuing a decline after peaking earlier in the year but still elevated compared to historical norms.
Nationally, units are taking an average of 34 days to get leased after being listed, a bit longer than is typical for this time of year.
In February 2020, immediately before the pandemic, Arlington’s median rental cost stood at $2,234. By January 2021, it had declined to $1,901 as renters departed for other areas.
The rebound then began, reaching a high point in June 2025 when the county hit an all-time record median rental price of $2,652.
A second firm that analyzes apartment rental data, Zumper, reported that September’s national one- and two-bedroom prices are positive annually at the same time for the first time in 16 months — a median price of $1,518 (+0.1%) for one-bedroom units and $1,903 (+0.5%) for two bedrooms.
In the Zumper National Rent Index, San Francisco’s one-bedroom rent climbed to its all-time high of $4,400, up 25.4% year over year, narrowing the gap with New York City ($4,580) to the tightest margin of the year, Zumper analysts reported.
There is no single dominant theme in the national rental market at the moment, Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy said.
“There really isn’t one U.S. rental market right now,” he said. “Markets still absorbing the building boom are competing aggressively for renters, while markets that avoided it are tightening quickly.”
Virginia Beach posted the second fastest rate of rent growth of any market in the country in September, trailing only San Francisco. One-bedroom rent is up 16.4% year over year to $1,770, and two-bedroom rent climbed 9.4% to $1,970.
Steady, well-funded demand from the region’s military bases, anchored by Naval Station Norfolk, has kept the market tight, Zumper analysts said.
Unlike the Sun Belt markets driving this month’s steepest declines, Virginia Beach never took on a major wave of new supply, analysts said. The market stayed relatively insulated from the national softness of the past few years; it posted positive rent growth through 2025 even as the national index was slipping, and that growth has only accelerated since.
Image via Francesca Tosolini/Unsplash
