Nationwide rent growth for single-family homes rose at a “seasonal” pace in June, according to recent reporting from market analytics firm Cotality, though it remained muted compared to recent years of outsized gains.

Single-family rent prices bumped up 1.5% year over year in June, down from 2.5% annual growth a year ago, according to the company’s latest Single-Family Rent Index.

Rent growth had been 1.3% higher over the 12 months ending in May — half the 2.6% growth rate a year earlier — led by outperformance in the Midwest and Northeast.

“Overall, June’s results point to a market that is slowly increasing rather than broadly accelerating,” said Molly Boesel, principal economist at Cotality, in analysis accompanying the report.

Noting that June marked the fourth consecutive month landlords had posted stronger annual gains, Boesel said the single-family rental market “remains much different from the rapid growth environment” observed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Investors accounted for roughly 3 in 10 home sales in 2025, a year in which rent growth slowed by more than half in many major metro markets.

Fix-and-flip stress

Through 2026, higher financing costs, declining rental yields and broader economic uncertainty have cooled investor outlooks, particularly among fix-and-flip investors seeing input and carrying costs rise against slowing sales and weakening resale prices.

Deteriorating market conditions have caused investor purchase share to decline from around 30% at the start of the year to roughly 27% in May and June, according to Cotality data shared with Scotsman Guide. That means investors remain a core source of purchase demand, accounting for more than 1 in 4 home sales.

But outlooks among rental investors have also darkened, according to a quarterly survey published in early August by investor-lender RCN Capital, which showed investor sentiment hitting its lowest levels since the summer of 2023. At that time, mortgage rates were around 6.8%, per Freddie Mac data, only slightly higher than current levels.

Boesel’s remarks echo those from analysts at global ratings firm Fitch Ratings, which flagged in late July how the U.S. housing economy has turned from “stagnation to contraction.”

DSCR pressures

Fitch rates mortgage-backed securities composed of debt-service coverage ratio (DSCR) loans, which many investors use to purchase rental properties. Those loans are underwritten based on rental cash flows, whereby monthly rents are supposed to cover investors’ monthly DSCR mortgage payments.

When asked about any early signs of weakness in Fitch’s portfolio, Ryan O’Loughlin, a senior director covering residential mortgage-backed securities for the company, noted that single-family rentals are “not in as favorable a position as they were a few years ago,” as some landlords struggle to pass through higher rents.

Meanwhile, higher holding costs for rental operators, such as from rising property insurance premiums and tax bills, are also undermining rental profits and DSCR ratios.

Not all operators are feeling these pressures the same, however.

“Pricing performance continues to vary across both regions and price tiers, with higher-end rentals posting stronger gains than lower-end properties,” noted Boesel in Thursday’s report. “At the local level, Midwestern markets continue to lead rent price growth, while some Sun Belt markets remain comparatively soft.”

High-end rental prices rose 2.4% annually in June compared to just 0.4% growth for lower-end units. Meanwhile, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia led the country in rent growth, posting respective growth rates of 5%, 3.4% and 3.2%. Houston registered its fifth straight month of declining rents and Dallas squeaked by with 0.2% growth.