This Mid-Atlantic City Rises to the Top of Renters’ Preferred Places to Live

With summer in full swing, more renters are thinking about where they want to live. Some are doing so by choice and others because they can’t find or afford a single-family house. 

Where they want to land of late has now been announced by RentCafé in its July report, which looked at 30 in-demand cities for renters. With its move to first place, Arlington, Va., displaced Kansas City, Mo., which slipped to fifth after being at the top for two months. 

In second place was a Southern favorite, Orlando, and in third another Heartland city, Cincinnati. Two other markets where renters have headed are New York’s Bronx and Queens boroughs, which each climbed higher. The Bronx moved up five slots to No. 9 and Queens rose six positions to be No. 19. Altogether, the winners reflect a nice geographic diversity. As part of that is the Northeast’s greater popularity with two new locations of Buffalo, N.Y., and Boston.

What constituted popularity in this ranking of various rental destinations? Those looking at RentCafe.com options may have saved them to their favorites, performed personalized searches of markets, looked at scarce unit availability and generally gave them a high number of listing views.

For example, Arlington showed a 76% increase in views, a 43% rise in saved searches and a 41% growth in favorited listings. Orlando, which previously was in 8th, reflected a 31% increase in listing views and its number of favorited apartments has more than doubled. Cincinnati, which moved up one position from last month, showed an increase of 34% in listing views and had a spike of 92% in favorited listings. Portland made it to No. 10 with 84% growth versus last year. Potential renters also increased their viewership of area listed properties by 10%, possibly, the report said because of its growing diversity of housing, which increased demand for apartments. 

Demand for rentals is also strong in the D.C. metro area, not just reflected by Arlington’s top spot but also by Washington, D.C.’s climb three positions to No. 13. It had fewer available listings and 44% more favorites by renters.

Of all the regions, the South emerged as the most sought after with 11 cities in the top 30. It even grabbed the No. 30 spot with Greensboro, N.C. squeaking in.