Apartment rents fell for the third straight month, consistent with typical seasonal trends, according to a new report from Apartment List.

The firm's national index fell by 1 percent over the course of November, the third straight month-over-month decline and the largest single month dip since 2017. Experts say the timing of the recent cooldown in the rental market is "consistent with the typical seasonal trend, but its magnitude has been notably sharper than what we've seen in the past, suggesting that the recent swing to falling rents is reflective of a broader shift in market conditions beyond seasonality alone."

"Going forward it is likely that rents will continue to dip further in the coming months as we move through the winter slow season for the rental market," Apartment List experts say. But rents appear to be normalizing to pre-pandemic levels: from January through November, rents are up by 4.7 percent, an amount "much closer to the growth rates we saw in 2018 and 2019 than it is to the astronomical 18 percent growth that we saw at this point last year," according to Apartment List.