The median apartment rent across Fairfax County was down 1.3% year over year in July, with most major residential areas posting declines.
The county’s median apartment rent for all sized units was $2,430, down from $2,463 in July 2025, according to figures reported July 29 by Apartment List.
Broken down by size, median rents were $2,082 countywide for one-bedroom units and $2,412 for two bedrooms.
The county hit an all-time high in rental costs in June 2025 with a median rate of $2,471. During the pandemic, rental rates bottomed out at a median $1,818 in January 2021, after having stood at $1,972 in March 2020.
Of the eight geographic areas of the Fairfax area tracked by Apartment List, seven showed year-over-year declines and one was essentially flat:
- Annandale: Median apartment rents of $1,850 for one-bedroom units, $2,111 for two bedrooms, down 6% year over year
- Centreville: $2,075/$2,411, down 2.2%
- Fair Oaks: $2,222/$2,484, down 3.9%
- Fairfax City: $1,918/$2,195, down 2.9%
- Herndon: $1,888/$2,266, up 0.1%
- Lorton: $2,249/$2,727, down 1.1%
- Reston: $2,247/$2,379, down 0.9%
- Tysons: $2,242/$2,906, down 1.1%
In Tysons, the $2,666 median rental rate for all sized units in July 2026 was slightly down from the all-time record set at $2,696 in June 2025, but was well above the median of $2,066 at the depths of the pandemic in January 2021.
In Reston, the median rental rate of $2,424 was below the all-time record set in July 2025 but above the median $1,803 in January 2021.
Nationally, the median apartment rental rate in July was $1,220 for one-bedroom units, $1,347 for two bedrooms and $1,388 overall, down 1.1% from a year before but up for the sixth month in a row as rates follow typical seasonal norms.
According to Apartment List analysts:
“The broad contours of this seasonal pattern are a dependable trend, but in recent years we’ve seen sharper winter dips and more modest summer bumps as the market has gone through a soft spell amid a wave of new multifamily construction. As a result, full-year rent growth has been negative for each of the past three years.”
In dollar terms, the national median monthly rent of July 2026 is down $15 compared to July 2025. Nationally, prices peaked in mid-2022 after a year and a half of skyrocketing growth. Since then, the nationwide median rent has been gradually drifting down and has fallen from that peak by a total of 3.7%, or $54 monthly.
Despite the prolonged pullback in prices, today’s rent levels remain 21% higher nationally than they were at the start of 2021.
As part of its monthly report, Apartment List ranks the 100 largest urban areas. The top five most expensive for July were four California communities — San Francisco ($3,714), San Jose ($3,118), Irvine ($3,059) and Fremont ($2,961) — plus Arlington ($2,611). The least expensive of the 100 were Toledo ($908), Detroit ($1,041) and Tucson ($1,045).
Another analytics firm, Zumper, on July 29 was out with its own July market report.
Nationally, the price of one-bedroom apartments stood at $1,520 for the month, with two-bedroom units at $1,906, in the Zumper report. Following cyclical norms, national rents were up for the sixth month in a row.
Leading the pack nationally in the Zumper analysis was San Francisco, where median one-bedroom rents grew 23% year over year to $4,180 and two-bedroom rents were up 26% to $6,020, a national record high.
Zumper analysts expect the national market to follow norms and cool in the second half of the year:
“We are now approaching the tail end of the peak moving season, and the off-season cooldown in prices is likely to begin in another month or two. This trend is in line with typical seasonal patterns — prices generally increase in the spring and summer when most moves take place, and then soften in the fall and winter as moving activity slows.”
The most important driver behind the soft market conditions that have persisted for over three years has been a historic surge of multifamily construction, Zumper analysts said, with 2024 seeing the most new units (600,000+) for any year since 1986.
“Since then, deliveries of new apartments have slowed considerably, albeit while remaining fairly robust by historic standards,” analysts said. “Despite being at the tail end of the construction boom, the market had still been struggling to absorb the swell of new inventory — [but] is now finally changing.”
