Alaska rental market data

Apartment List’s Alaska recent-lease rent increased 1.3% year over year to $1,656 in July 2026. The national rent series declined 1.1%, leaving Alaska’s measured growth 2.4 percentage points higher. This supports testing current local rents rather than importing the direction of the national series into an Alaska underwriting case.

The packet does not provide Alaska values for Apartment List’s Vacancy Index or time-on-market series. The separate national measures show vacancy at 7.16%, up 0.09 percentage points, and time on market at 30 days, up from 28. Those are national liquidity indicators, not evidence of Alaska vacancy or listing time.

Employment declined a median 0.7% across three measured metros. Juneau grew 1.6%, but Anchorage declined 0.7% and Fairbanks declined 1.8%. Juneau therefore prevents a uniform weak-demand reading, while the other two metros require more conservative checks on employer concentration and tenant depth.

Across 27 county-level areas with migration records, net migration was negative by 1,502 people, equal to 2.0 per 1,000 residents. Aggregate adjusted gross income associated with movers also had a negative gap of $193,519. These migration records cover 2022–2023, so they provide a demand warning rather than a same-period explanation for 2026 rent movements.

Fairbanks rent rose 5.7% while home value rose 3.1%, a calculated 2.6 percentage-point rent lead. Its measured rent was $1,744 against a $316,216 value, producing a 6.6% gross yield. That combination is more favorable to gross income relative to entry price than Anchorage within this two-metro comparison.

Anchorage moved in the opposite direction: rent rose 4.3% while home value increased 6.1%, so rent lagged by a calculated 1.9 percentage points. Its gross yield was 5.0%. These are gross ratios before operating, financing, tax and insurance costs, and they do not establish property-level returns.

Redfin’s for-sale series shows Anchorage at 13 median days on market and Fairbanks at 51, a calculated 38-day difference. Months of supply were much closer at 1.8 and 1.9, respectively. Price drops affected 29.7% of Anchorage listings and 34.1% of Fairbanks listings, even as both measured sale-to-list ratios remained slightly above 100%.

Permitting was also uneven: Juneau recorded 2.6 permitted units per 1,000 residents, compared with 0.7 in Anchorage and 0.2 in Fairbanks. These figures support metro-specific exit and supply assumptions; they do not establish neighborhood inventory or the condition of competing rentals.

Across 30 county-level areas, the ACS housing-vacancy median was 26.7%, with the measured distribution running from 14.3% at the 10th percentile to 51.2% at the 90th. The median single-family share was 80.2%, while the median large-multifamily share was only 1.3%. Lake and Peninsula Borough illustrates the distinction: its vacancy rate was 75.8%, but 92.2% of its stock was single-family.

The packet does not identify how many vacant units are available to year-round tenants. Affordability is a separate concern: the median share of renters spending at least 30% of income on rent was 34.5% across the measured areas, reaching 52.9% in Haines Borough, 52.7% in Matanuska-Susitna Borough and 49.0% in Ketchikan Gateway Borough.

The packet records 371 non-occupant purchases among 7,142 county purchase originations. Dividing those supplied totals gives a calculated 5.2% share, while the median county share across 27 measured areas was 3.1% and the 90th percentile was 12.8%.

The highest named shares come from very small denominators. Hoonah-Angoon Census Area and Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area each recorded one non-occupant purchase among six purchases, or 16.7%. Aleutians West Census Area recorded one among seven, or 14.3%. Those percentages flag activity for review but do not establish deep or repeatable investor competition.