October 2020 Tucson Rents Increased 6% Year-over-Year

Tucson rents increased over the past month. In this report from Apartment List, trends in the Tucson rental market were evaluated, including comparisons to cities throughout the state and nation.

Tucson rents increase sharply over the past month

Tucson rents have increased 0.9% over the past month, and have increased sharply by 6.0% in comparison to the same time last year. Currently, median rents in Tucson stand at $801 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,071 for a two-bedroom. This is the sixth straight month that the city has seen rent increases after a decline in March. Tucson’s year-over-year rent growth leads the state average of 3.3%, as well as the national average of -1.4%.

Rents rising across cities in Arizona

Throughout the past year, rent increases have been occurring not just in the city of Tucson, but across the entire state. Of the largest 10 cities that we have data for in Arizona, 8 of them have seen prices rise. The state as a whole logged rent growth of 3.3% over the past year. Here’s a look at how rents compare across some of the largest cities in the state.

  • Looking throughout the state, Scottsdale is the most expensive of all Arizona’s major cities, with a median two-bedroom rent of $1,479; of the 10 largest cities in Arizona that we have data for, Scottsdale and Tempe, where two-bedrooms go for $1,479 and $1,309, are the only two major cities in the state to see rents fall year-over-year (-0.9% and -0.5%).
  • Mesa, Tucson, and Glendale have all experienced year-over-year growth above the state average (6.0%, 6.0%, and 5.9%, respectively).

Tucson rents more affordable than many other large cities nationwide

As rents have increased significantly in Tucson, other large cities nationwide have seen rents grow more modestly, or in some cases, even decline. Tucson is still more affordable than most similar cities across the country.

  • Tucson’s median two-bedroom rent of $1,071 is slightly below the national average of $1,106. Nationwide, rents have fallen by 1.4% over the past year compared to the 6.0% increase in Tucson.
  • While Tucson’s rents rose significantly over the past year, the city of Detroit also saw an increase of 1.6%.
  • Renters will find more reasonable prices in Tucson than most comparable cities. For example, San Francisco has a median 2BR rent of $2,592, which is nearly two-and-a-half times the price in Tucson.

For more information check out the national report. You can also access our full data for cities and counties across the U.S. at this link.

Methodology – Recent Updates:

Data from private listing sites, including Apartment List, tends to skew toward luxury apartments, which introduces sample bias when estimates are calculated directly from these listings. To address these limitations, it recently made major updates to its methodology, which it believes has greatly improved the accuracy and reliability of its estimates.

Methodology:

Apartment List is committed to making its rent estimates the best and most accurate available. To do this, it start with reliable median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then extrapolates them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from listing data. In doing so, we use a same-unit analysis similar to Case-Shiller’s approach, comparing only units that are available across both time periods to provide an accurate picture of rent growth in cities across the country.

The approach corrects for the sample bias inherent in other private sources, producing results that are much closer to statistics published by the Census Bureau and HUD. Its methodology also allows to construct a picture of rent growth over an extended period of time, with estimates that are updated each month.

Read more about its methodology here.