District of Columbia rental market data

Apartment List's recent-lease rent measure fell from $2,215 to $2,154, a 2.8% decline. Its separate Vacancy Index rose by 0.6 percentage point to 7.6%, and rental listing time increased by 8.0 days to 33.3 days. The direction of all three measures supports testing deals without assumed rent growth and with a slower lease-up case.

The alignment does not show that the same properties experienced lower rents, higher vacancy and longer marketing periods. Rent, vacancy and time on market are separate Apartment List series with different coverage, and none establishes a particular building's occupancy, concessions or tenant retention.

Washington, DC employment declined 2.3%, but the migration record counted 32,848 movers in and 31,175 out. That produced net migration of 1,673, equal to 2.5 per 1,000 residents. Population movement therefore provides a genuine counter-signal to the weaker employment and rental readings.

Income movement was less favorable: aggregate mover AGI was $86,003 inbound and $117,157 outbound, a negative gap of $31,154. The job and migration series cover different periods and populations, and migration does not identify renter status. They support verifying the demand base for a specific property, not declaring demand uniformly strong or weak.

For the District of Columbia county-equivalent area, Zillow measured a $579,334 value, down 2.3%, and $2,532 rent, down 1.1%, with a supplied gross yield of 5.2%. FHFA's annual index instead rose 0.4%, while its longer-run measure was up 12.6%. These methodologies are not interchangeable; the disagreement makes acquisition and exit values sensitive to the selected comp set.

Realtor.com recorded 2,886 active listings, a median 53 days on market, price reductions on 17.6% of listings and a 30.3% pending ratio. Those are resale conditions, not Apartment List rental marketing time. They can inform an exit-liquidity screen but cannot establish rental absorption, and the packet contains no county listing-price record.

The Washington, DC metro screen pairs a $584,684 value with $2,448 monthly rent, producing a supplied gross yield of 5.0%. Median household income was $126,684, the rent-to-income measure was 23.2%, and the price-to-income ratio was 4.62.

Measured rent was 1.09 times the $2,246 two-bedroom HUD Fair Market Rent. That comparison helps test positioning, but HUD's standard is not a guaranteed achievable rent or a unit-level affordability finding. The gross yield also precedes vacancy, concessions, maintenance, taxes, insurance, financing and capital spending.

ACS measures show renters occupying 58.5% of the District of Columbia housing base, while 46.6% of renters met the measure for spending at least 30% of income on rent. That combination indicates a large tenant market but limited evidence of broad capacity to absorb higher housing costs.

The ACS housing vacancy measure was 10.1%, separate from Apartment List's current rental Vacancy Index and not suitable for blending with it. Large multifamily properties represented 42.0% of stock and single-family homes 32.7%; the median year built was 1958. These figures make property type and physical diligence important, but they do not reveal the condition, required capital work or vacancy of a specific building.

FEMA assigns inland flood as the mutually exclusive leading-hazard label for the one measured county-equivalent area. The area-level climate loss ratio was 0.048%. This supports requesting property-specific flood, insurance and mitigation information, but it does not mean every parcel's primary exposure is inland flood.

The measured effective property-tax rate was 0.585%, with a median tax of $4,312. Those figures provide an area-level expense reference only; they cannot determine the assessed value, exemptions or actual tax bill for a prospective acquisition.