• Atlanta is the top city for renters to watch in 2024 after attracting the highest rental activity on RentCafe.com in the last 12 months.

• Kansas City, MO, ranks second in our annual ranking, closely followed by Cincinnati. Both cities demonstrated increased rental activity in 2023.

• The Midwest is the #1 region for renters to keep an eye on in 2024 with 12 cities in our top 30 and soaring engagement rates in the last year.

For the typical American, the housing market has likely felt quite challenging in 2023. High home prices and rising interest rates pushed many to continue their renter lifestyles. As we look ahead to 2024, which cities will continue to see the most rental activity and attract apartment hunters?

To find out, we dug a little deeper to determine which cities were the year’s stars for renters as 2023 came to a close. After closely monitoring and reporting on the most active rental markets every month throughout this last year, we totaled the same metrics for the entire 12-month period.

Atlanta is the #1 city to watch in 2024 after attracting the highest number of online engagements on RentCafe.com in the last year. The popularity of Atlanta listings also helped the city rank first in April 2023 and the city is expected to maintain its momentum in 2024. Kansas City, MO, comes in second in our annual top 30, followed by another Midwestern city, Cincinnati — both cities are anticipated to be renter favorites in 2024. Notably, KCMO climbed to the top spot on our list in our May and June reports, while Cincy landed at #4 on both occasions.

Virginia’s Arlington is fourth on our list as it saw increased interest from apartment hunters in 2023. This comes after Arlington’s high demand during the peak rental season of last year, leading our rental activity top 30 for three consecutive months from July to September — a one-of-a-kind achievement. Then, Orlando, FL, rounds out our top five of cities to keep tabs on in 2024 due to high online engagement rates as one of the most popular sunny destinations for renters in 2023.

The Midwest is the top region to watch in 2024 after seeing the most rental activity in the last 12 months. As a result, cities like Minneapolis (#6), Detroit (#12) and Chicago (#16) are expected to maintain increased renter appeal throughout the year.

The Midwest counts 12 cities on our top 30 list. For comparison, the South claims nine spots, while the Northeast and West have five and four entries, respectively.

In the Northeast, Queens, NY, leads at #11 in our ranking, with Buffalo, NY (#14), and the Bronx, NY (#15), not far behind. Philadelphia (#24) and Boston (#27) are other Northeastern cities expected to continue drawing significant renter interest in the coming year.

Atlanta is top city for renters to watch in 2024

Below are the top 10 cities to keep an eye on in 2024 based on increased rental activity in the last 12 months:

1. Atlanta

With its transformed Midtown and IT brain power source Georgia Tech, Atlanta was on renters’ radar throughout 2023. Atlanta listings on RentCafe.com attracted the most attention from apartment seekers (who added properties to their favorites list and saved their personalized searches to make their quest easier), pushing the city to #1.

In fact, renters favorited 60% more Atlanta apartments in 2023 compared to 2022, which shows an increased intent to move to this welcoming Southern city. The city’s appeal to renters was also shown by the overall high rate of saved searches on RentCafe.com as Atlanta ranked first among all 150 cities we analyzed for this specific metric.

For the full report visit www.rentcafe.com