How much cheaper is it to rent an apartment than to own a home right now? The short answer: a lot, and almost everywhere you look, not only in expensive coastal cities.

New research from John Burns Research & Consulting compares the full monthly cost of owning a home for a new buyer (mortgage, taxes, insurance, and upkeep) against the average apartment rent in each metro area. The chart below plots every major market. The further down a city sits, the bigger the savings from renting.

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1) California: The Biggest Gaps by Far

It’s no surprise that the West Coast shows the largest savings. In the Bay Area and Southern California, owning a home costs far more than renting. In San Francisco and San Jose, buying runs more than $8,000 a month above the cost of renting. In Los Angeles and San Diego, the gap is close to $4,000 a month. For anyone who believes in California’s rental market, this is a powerful data point.

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2) The Big Sun Belt Markets: Renting Wins Here Too

Here’s the part that surprises people. The savings from renting now beat the national average across much of the Sun Belt: Austin, Denver, Dallas, Raleigh, Las Vegas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Nashville. In every one of those metros, renting is more than 50% cheaper than owning.

Put simply: if you move out of an apartment and buy a house in these cities (yes, even in Texas), your monthly housing cost would more than double. In some of these markets, that’s close to $2,000 more every month.

For years, cheaper home prices in the Sun Belt were seen as a reason renters would leave to buy. Today the math points the other way. Unless home prices or mortgage rates fall sharply, this wide gap looks like it will stick around, which supports steady apartment demand across the region.

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3) The Midwest: Smaller Gaps, Steady Demand

In the Midwest, the savings from renting are much smaller. Owning costs just 7% more than renting in Pittsburgh, about $107 a month. The gap is around 13% in Detroit and 20% in St. Louis, and under 30% in Memphis, Cleveland, and Chicago.

But a smaller gap hasn’t hurt apartment performance in these cities. The Midwest’s strength is less about the rent-versus-buy math and more about steady, reliable demand: a stable base that continues to support apartments there.

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What This Means For Us

At Faris Capital Partners, we see research like this as strong support for our focus on multifamily real estate. When renting is far cheaper than buying, fewer renters leave to become homeowners, which helps keep apartments full and rents steady.

The gap is only one piece of the picture, of course. We still choose our markets carefully, one at a time, and pair that with conservative underwriting and hands-on management. But the current math, especially across the high-growth Sun Belt markets we favor, lines up well with our long-term strategy.

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Bottom Line

Renting is now much cheaper than owning a home across nearly every major market: more than 50% cheaper in the big Sun Belt cities and even further ahead on the California coast. That wide gap makes it harder for renters to leave and buy, which supports steady demand for apartments. It’s one more reason well-chosen multifamily in high-growth markets remains a smart place to invest.

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