Florida is bucking the national housing trend, real estate firm says

While the majority of the country is seeing rent prices increase, Florida's rental market is getting more affordable. 

According to a Wednesday report from real estate firm Redfin, the median apartment asking rent nationwide rose 0.7% year over year in June, notching $1,654. This marked the biggest gain in over a year. It was also the highest median price since October 2022, according to Redfin. 

Comparatively, the four most populous metro areas in Florida are seeing rent prices declines.

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For instance, the median asking rent in Jacksonville fell 12.4% year over year in June, which was the biggest drop in the area dating back to 2019. In Tampa, the median asking rent slipped 6%, which is also the largest decline in the area on record, according to Redfin.

Meanwhile, in Orlando and Miami, prices fell 4.8% and 3.8%, respectively.

Similarly, Austin, Texas, another pandemic hot spot, is also seeing rents fall fast, dropping a record 12.6% from a year earlier in June, according to Redfin. That's the largest drop among the over two dozen metros that Redin has tracked rent prices. 

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Redfin attributed such declines, in part, to the moving trends spurred by the pandemic. 

An influx of apartments were built in Florida and Texas in order to accommodate the rush of people that were moving into the area during the pandemic. 

However, now property owners are forced to lower prices to compete for tenants, Redfin reported. 

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Additionally, the other reason for these dips is "because they overheated during the pandemic" and are still coming back down. 

A good example of this is in Tampa, where rents surged as much as 37.8% year-over-year in 2022, double the nationwide gain at that time. 

While it's a good time to hunt for bargains in these states, Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari also warned that "renters in Florida should be aware that landlords are grappling with surging home insurance costs, and they may ultimately ask tenants to foot the bill via higher rents."