Feel the heat dissipating and the cool coming? The once-hot apartment market continues to slow with both annual and monthly rent growth turning negative, according to the September 2023 Apartment List National Rent Report. 

This downward trajectory is the first time this has happened since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, the rent index decreased 0.1% this August. What's particularly notable is that this negative downturn started a month earlier than it occurred last year. Generally, prices go up in spring and summer and down in fall and winter. This year was different with the switch happening a month earlier. And it happened in a relatively short period since back in early 2022, all 100 cities in the country surveyed were posting positive year-over-year rent increases.

As of the end of this August, annual rent growth stands at minus 1.2%, which translates into apartments nationwide being 1.2% less costly than they were a year ago. This represents a big switch from recent years when annual rent growth had soared 18% nationally and some in the most popular cities skyrocketed more than 40%.