Austin rents are up, but only a little

The common local wisdom is that Austin rents are always rising and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The reality, it turns out, is a little different—and, as with most thing, the stats depend on the sources.

As spring breezes along, prominent rental sites continue to publish new information analyzing the state of recent prices, for the most part measured by their platforms. Depending on whom you ask, median Austin rent is currently anywhere from $1,120 to $1,450 for a one-bedroom apartment.

Listing site Abodo pegs our median one-bedroom rents at $1,157 (a tiny drop from April) and $1,448 for a two-bedroom (a small increase over last month).

Apartment List’s numbers tend to be on the lower end because of different methodology. Its goal is to figure out what median rent recent movers are actually paying without skewing toward luxury listings. It incorporates both listing and census data into its calculations.

AL’s estimates one-bedrooms ($1,120), and two-bedrooms ($1,380) are virtually unchanged from last month, with 0.2 increase in both categories. and 0.1 percent increases, respectively.

While rent is largely the same as last month’s, according to Apartment List also shows Austin rent remaining relatively flat year over year, with an 0.1 percent increase over May of last year.

Zumper found a similarly flat landscape, with a .9 percent increase in one-bedroom rents, to $1,170, and two-bedroom rents, at $1,450, completely flat since last month. However, it found a much larger jump in rents year over year, with 11.4% and 8.2% increases, respectively, over last year.