Moving Here, Moving There

New report shows where Houstonians want to move, and who wants to come here

Chicago and New York residents are eyeing Houston.

Photo courtesy of Caydon

The economy is unstable, jobs are up in the air, and the global population waits to see when the COVID-19 pandemic will slow down. But some people are still thinking about moving, and according to Apartment List, they're seriously considering Texas.

The website's quarterly Renter Migration Report is out, using searches made on its platform between January 1 and April 15, 2020, to map where renters are looking to make their next move.

Chicago (3.3 percent), New York (3.4 percent), and San Antonio (22.8 percent) are also eyeing Houston, while H-Town residents are looking to keep it close in Dallas (8.9 percent), San Antonio (6.8 percent), and Austin (6.6 percent).

Austin is the most popular Texas city in the report, with the region increasingly being seen as an alternative to the expensive coastal metros where tech jobs have historically clustered. A staggering 70.9 percent of searches for apartments in Austin come from outside the metro, Apartment List reports, the highest share among the nation's 50 largest metros.

Aside from the 25 percent searching from San Antonio, the 4.6 percent from Dallas, and the 4.5 percent from Houston, 4.2 percent of renters searching for apartments in Austin currently live in the New York City metro. Furthermore, 2.5 percent of inbound searches to Austin are coming from Los Angeles and an additional 2.5 percent are coming from the San Francisco Bay Area.

For as many people who want to enter Austin from San Antonio, there's nearly the same amount that would be doing the opposite. Austin renters searched for San Antonio (16.8 percent), Dallas (7.9 percent), and College Station (6.4 percent).

While current Chicago residents and New Yorkers are typing "Dallas" into their search bars, accounting for 3.6 percent and 3 percent of data exploring Big D, respectively, it's San Antonians who are truly interested. A whopping 23.1 percent of current Alamo City residents made exploratory apartment searches in Dallas this past quarter. Overall, 32.8 percent of those looking for a place to live in Dallas are searching from outside the metro.

Meanwhile, 8.7 percent of apartment hunters currently living in Dallas are looking to move elsewhere. They searched for Houston (4.9 percent), San Antonio (4.8 percent), and Los Angeles (4.5 percent).

And though we've heard about it several times, where does San Antonio fall in all this? Turns out renters who currently live there are thinking about moving to Dallas (17.7 percent), followed by Houston (12.4 percent) and Austin (8.4 percent). Residents of McAllen (5 percent), Dallas (3.9 percent), and Houston (3.5 percent) are considering making San Antonio home.

rent reports

renter report

Houston home to No. 2 biggest drop in rent prices in U.S. since last year

Photo by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti on Unsplash

Houston nearly topped the list with the second-biggest year-over-year decline in rent prices nationwide.

A new Zumper rent report has revealed that Texas is leading the nation in annual rent declines since 2025, and Houston rent prices have fallen as much as 14 percent since last August.

Zumper's monthly report analyzes one- and two-bedroom rent prices from the previous month across 100 U.S. cities, and tracks one-month and year-over-year changes.

Austin, Houston, and Dallas, respectively, locked out the top three cities where one-bedroom rent prices have plummeted more than anywhere else in the country.

A one-bedroom apartment in Houston had a $1,050 monthly rent price in August, down 14.6 percent since this time last year. Two-bedroom units were 5.4 percent cheaper than they were a year ago and now sit at $1,400 per month.

The reports findings show a similar pattern across Texas' biggest metros as "elevated multifamily supply" was "absorbed through the boom years." Renters currently have the advantageous opportunity to negotiate lower rent from their landlords, according to Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy.

"Texas is showing exactly what happens when supply materially outruns demand," Mullahy said. "Austin, Houston and Dallas added enormous amounts of inventory, and renters now have leverage because owners are competing to fill it. That won’t reverse until enough of that supply is absorbed."

For comparison, Zumper's National Rent Index for August 2026 found the median one-bedroom rent fell 0.1 percent year-over-year to $1,515, while two-bedroom rent increased 0.5 percent to $1,907

Rent prices across Texas
Austin tops the U.S. with the steepest decline in both one- and two-bedroom rent prices in August. A one-bedroom unit in Texas' capital city had a $1,260 monthly price, down 16.6 percent from August 2025. Rent for a two-bedroom unit declined even further, by 19.1 percent, to $1,610 per month.

One-bedroom apartments in Dallas weren't far behind. Rent for a single-bedroom unit dipped 13 percent year-over-year to $1,270, and the price for a two-bedroom unit fell 13.4 percent to $1,810.

Elsewhere in the North Texas region, rent prices for a one-bedroom unit in Plano have dipped 7.1 percent since last year to $1,310. Single-bedroom units in Irving are renting for $1,210 a month, or 4.7 percent lower than they were the year before.

In Fort Worth and Arlington, one-bedroom units had a monthly asking price of $1,160 and $1,080 in August. Arlington's one-bedroom rent price is unchanged from 2025, and Fort Worth's is down 3.3 percent.

This is how much it cost for a two-bedroom unit across DFW in August, compared to the previous year:

Plano: $1,920 per month, down 3.5 percent
Irving: $1,620 per month, down 4.7 percent
Fort Worth: $1,530 per month, down 5.5 percent
Arlington: $1,460 per month, down 2.8 percent

In San Antonio, single-bedroom rent prices fell 8.6 percent to $960 per month, and two-bedroom rent declined by 4.5 percent to $1,260.

apartments housing real estate rent rent prices zumper houston