Arlington is still the priciest place to rent in the D.C. metro area, even as local rents continue to trend downward from their 2022 peak.
The median one-bedroom apartment in Arlington costs $2,420 a month, topping all other metro-area cities in Zumper’s monthly Washington D.C. Metro Report, released today (Monday). Washington, D.C. was second at $2,250, followed by Alexandria at $2,230.
Arlington rents have declined 3.6% year over year, the second-largest annual drop among metro-area cities tracked by Zumper, behind only Herndon at 6.4%. Fredericksburg rounded out the top three, falling 3.2%.
The county’s rents have been sliding since their post-pandemic highs, posting their first annual decline since 2020 last year. Arlington remains the fifth most expensive rental market in the nation according to Apartment List — the most expensive outside California — with an overall median rent of $2,585 in March, down 1.7% from a year earlier.
“The rental market has begun to turn the corner into the busier spring leasing season, but multifamily conditions remain soft,” Apartment List analysts said in their most recent report.
Nationally, median rents have fallen 5.5% from their 2022 peak, according to Apartment List. The White House noted in February that rents had hit a four-year low, citing six straight monthly declines.
The region is mirroring that trend. In neighboring Alexandria, median rents posted their first year-over-year drop since 2020 at the end of last year. The D.C. metro area’s overall median rent stands at $2,137, according to Apartment List.
Buying isn’t easier
If declining rents suggest a more renter-friendly market, the picture for prospective homebuyers is more complicated.
Renting is now cheaper than owning a home in all 100 of the largest U.S. metro areas, according to a LendingTree analysis of census data reported by Axios. Homeowners with a mortgage pay about 37% more per month than renters nationally, and that gap widened over the past year as ownership costs rose faster than rents.
Mortgage rates, which had been trending lower heading into 2026, have reversed course amid rising inflation fears tied to the war with Iran, according to the Associated Press. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage climbed from just under 6% in late February to 6.46% this week, the AP reported — its highest level in nearly seven months.
“The war in Iran has seriously complicated the spring buying season,” Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com, told the AP.
The D.C. area is among the metro areas where home listing prices have dropped more than 5% year over year, according to Realtor.com data cited in the AP report. Analysts projected late last year that D.C.-area home prices would decline in 2026, with federal uncertainty weighing on the market.
Even with those price declines, affordability remains a challenge. The median price of an existing home sold nationally in February was $398,000 — nearly five times the median household income, according to the National Association of Realtors. A historic rule of thumb pegged that ratio at three-to-one.
Nationally, there were about 46% more sellers than prospective buyers in the market in February, according to Redfin — the largest such gap on records going back to 2013. Active home listings jumped nearly 8% year over year, per Realtor.com, with some 43 of the 50 largest metro areas seeing more homes for sale than a year earlier.
State and local policy response
In Arlington, the County Board has pushed for anti-rent-gouging legislation in Richmond, and the county’s rental housing stock has grown more accessible to middle-income earners as incomes have risen faster than rents in recent years.
At the state level, Gov. Abigail Spanberger last week signed a first round of housing bills passed by the General Assembly, including measures to leverage the state’s bonding authority for affordable housing development and to expand Virginia’s Eviction Reduction Program.
A state-directed study found a shortage of roughly 200,000 affordable housing units statewide, according to the Virginia Mercury. Spanberger has until April 13 to act on the remaining bills from the 2026 session.
