Austin leads the list at -22.2%. Fort Myers -19.4%. Phoenix -14.2%. San Antonio -13.7%. Denver -12.5%. Salt Lake City -11.8%. Atlanta -11.4%. Nashville -10.7%. Dallas -10.5%.
Every single city on this list is in a state that either bans rent control outright or has no rent control laws on the books. Texas, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, North Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee, Georgia. These states took the opposite approach, instead of capping prices, they made it easier to build.
Austin is the clearest case study. Pew Research just published a deep dive on how Austin pulled it off. From 2015 to 2024, the city added 120,000 housing units, a 30% increase in total housing stock, more than three times the national rate. They rezoned neighborhoods to allow larger apartment buildings near jobs and transit. They removed minimum parking requirements citywide. They streamlined permitting to reduce costs and construction timelines. They loosened ADU regulations so homeowners could build secondary units on their lots.
The result: Austin's median rent went from $1,546 in December 2021 to $1,272 by February 2026. That's a 22% decline during a period when the city's population grew by 18,000 people. In older buildings that serve lower-income renters, rents fell 11% in a single year.
Austin issued 957 apartment building permits per 100,000 residents between 2021 and 2023, far outpacing every other major metro in the country.
Compare that to cities with strict rent control. San Francisco's rent-controlled housing stock has shrunk as landlords convert or demolish units rather than operate under price caps. New York's rent-stabilized units have declined 14% since 1984. Portland's 2020 rent law slowed new construction. In every case, rent control reduced supply and pushed overall market rents higher for everyone not lucky enough to hold a control led unit.
The pattern is clear. The cities where rents are actually falling are the ones that made it easy to build more housing. No price caps. No labyrinthine permitting. Just supply meeting demand.
The free market solved the rent crisis in these cities. Regulation made it worse in the others.
