Zillow Observed Rent
The typical asking rent for a home in an area as Zillow measures it, how much it has moved over the past several years, and how it compares with the typical rent for this time of year.
On this page
The typical asking rent for a home in an area, in dollars, updated monthly.
Zillow builds this from repeated observations of the same rental units over time, weighted to the rental housing stock rather than to whatever happens to be listed in a given month (Methodology: Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI)). That design is meant to track how much rent for a similar unit has actually moved, rather than how the mix of what is currently advertised has shifted.
This is the rent-side counterpart to home value (Zillow) on the site: one is what it costs to buy in an area, the other what it costs to rent, both from the same kind of repeat-observation index rather than a simple average of asking prices.
Metrics in this family#
Zillow observed rent
The most recent monthly index value, in dollars.
Zillow observed rent change, 1 year
The change in that value over the past year, as a percentage.
Zillow observed rent change, 3 year
The change in that value over the past three years, as a percentage.
Zillow observed rent change, 5 year
The change in that value over the past five years, as a percentage. Available in fewer places than the shorter windows — see coverage.
Zillow observed rent vs. seasonal norm
How the current month's rent compares with the typical rent for this time of year in this same area, rather than with a fixed number of years back. Rent, like home listings, moves with the season, so this reading is measured against the area's own seasonal pattern instead of a calendar-year change.
Considerations#
The number is a model output. Every figure rests on Zillow's own construction of a repeat-rent series, so wherever the underlying rental listings are thin — small markets, unusual units — the index inherits that weakness without signalling it.
Coverage thins with the length of the window. A one-year change is available in far more places than a five-year one, and the areas that drop out as the window lengthens are not a random sample — they skew toward smaller and less-covered markets. A ten-year change is not offered for this metric at any geography, because coverage that far back would represent only a small, unrepresentative slice of places.
Tract figures are assembled, not published. Zillow reports nothing at tract level, so a tract's rent is a blend of the ZIP codes overlapping it, weighted by shared housing units. A tract split between a cheap ZIP code and an expensive one is the least reliable case.
The value is nominal. It is not adjusted for inflation, so a multi-year change includes general price inflation as well as rent-specific movement.
The seasonal comparison should read as one-sided. Rents have risen over most of this index's history, so a "vs. seasonal norm" reading sits above zero in most places most of the time; what distinguishes one place from another is how far above (or below) its own norm it sits, not whether the number is positive.
This family is new. The underlying data rows were added to the registry immediately before this page was written; the family has not yet been reviewed against a live count of places served, and this page will be re-checked once it has.
References#
- 1Methodology: Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI)https://www.zillow.com/research/methodology-zori-repeat-rent-27092/