2025 Rental Market Study Released
Nearly 905,000 low-income renters in Florida struggle with their housing costs. That’s the topline finding of the Shimberg Center’s 9th Statewide Rental Market Study.
This is the first part of a four-part series highlighting the release of the 2025 Rental Market Study. This study is conducted by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida on behalf of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation and provides information about the characteristics of households in need of affordable rental housing and the subsidized housing available in the state. This first article is written by Anne Ray of the Shimberg Center, and board member of the Florida Housing Coalition, who breaks down key pieces of the 2025 Rental Market Study. The rest of the series will focus on policy solutions to address the needs identified in the Study.
Since 2001, the Shimberg Center has produced the Rental Market Study every three years to help guide geographic and demographic funding priorities for Florida Housing’s State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) and other multifamily programs. The study weighs the affordable rental housing needs of Florida’s small, medium, and large counties; elders; persons with disabilities or other special needs; and workforce segments including farmworkers and commercial fishing workers.
The 2025 study found that an estimated 904,635 renters in Florida have low incomes (below 60% of area median income, or AMI) and are cost burdened (pay more than 40% of their income for housing). Of these, 64% live in Florida’s nine large counties, 33% in medium counties, and three percent in small counties.
Other key findings include the following:
Recent in-migration has placed pressure on Florida’s housing markets, especially in mid-sized counties across the center of the state.
Florida added over a million households between 2019 and 2023, including nearly 195,000 renters. Household growth was driven by strong in-migration from other states, particularly the Northeast, Illinois, and California.
A group of mid-Florida counties stretching from St. Johns in the northeast to Lee in the southwest received the largest inflows, both from newcomers to the state and from out-migration from Florida’s high-cost urban centers.
The state experienced large rent spikes starting in 2020.
Florida added over 240,000 multifamily rental units between 2019 and 2023, absorbing the increase in renters and offsetting a slight decline in single family rentals. Despite the new supply, Florida’s median rent increased by almost $500 per month during this time, from $1,238 to $1,719. These sharp increases far outpaced typical year-to-year rent growth.
Renters at all income levels participate in the workforce. Most non-working renter households are made up of older adults or persons with disabilities.
Because renter households tend to be younger than owners, renters participate in the workforce at higher rates than homeowners. Seventy-nine percent of renter households include at least one working adult, compared to 67% of owner households.
Most renter households without employment are those in which all adults are elderly, disabled, or both. Only six percent of renter households with working age, non-disabled adults are without employment.
Low-income renters are most likely to be cost burdened, but households above 60% AMI are also affected.
Statewide, 73% of renters with incomes below 60% AMI are cost burdened. While cost burden rates drop off as income goes up, an increase in cost burden rates in the middle range is striking; nearly half (45%) of renters at 60-80% AMI are cost burdened, up from 29% in the 2022 study.
After two decades of growth, the share of older cost burdened renters is stabilizing.
Florida’s older population grew more than twice as fast as the state’s overall population between 2010 and 2020. In the 2010 Rental Market Study, 29% of low-income, cost burdened households were headed by someone age 55 or older. By 2022, that share had grown to 39%.
This year, the share of 55+ cost burdened renters has leveled off at the same 39%. An estimated 352,861 cost burdened renter households with incomes below 60% AMI are headed by someone age 55 or older.
Homeless individuals and families add to the rental housing need.
The study estimates that 29,848 individuals and 44,234 families with children lack stable housing, over and above renters who are housed but cost burdened. This includes people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, unsheltered locations, hotels and motels, and doubled up with others. Both individual and family homelessness are up since the 2022 study, reflecting the tight rental housing market and spikes in displacement due to hurricanes.
Florida has an absolute shortage of affordable rental units up to 80% AMI. At 100 and 120% AMI, there are more affordable units than renters, but higher income renters take up affordable supply.
An affordable and available rental unit is any market rate or subsidized unit for which 1) a household below a certain income level would pay no more than 30% of income for gross rent, and 2) the unit is not already occupied by a higher income household.
At the 0-30% through 0-80% AMI levels, Florida has more renter households than affordable units. At 0-100% and 0-120% AMI, there are more affordable units than renter households, but still deficits of affordable and available units, since many affordable units are rented by households with higher incomes.
The gap between renters and affordable/available units is greatest in the 0-60% AMI range, with a deficit of 640,741 units.
Florida’s public and assisted housing stock provides 314,200 units of affordable rental housing--approximately one in ten rental units in the state.
Developments funded by Florida Housing Finance Corporation, HUD, USDA, and local housing finance authorities provide an affordable alternative to market-rate housing. Average rent in Florida Housing units is $1,011, well below the statewide average rent of $1,854. Public housing and units with project-based rental assistance provide the most deeply affordable units, with average rents near $330-420 per month.
By 2034, rent and income restrictions will expire for 402 developments with 33,284 assisted units. In some cases, these restrictions are renewable; in others, affordability restrictions will end unless new assisted financing is introduced. A forthcoming study from the Shimberg Center will take a more detailed look at the units at risk and the strategies to ensure they continue to provide affordable housing for the long haul.
About the Shimberg Center
The Shimberg Center for Housing Studies was established at the University of Florida in 1988 to promote safe, decent and affordable housing and related community development throughout the state of Florida. For more information about Florida’s housing needs, visit the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse or contact us at fhdc-comments@shimberg.ufl.edu.
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