Renting a place to live remains more expensive in the Nashville region than in any other area of Tennessee, the latest figures show.
A typical two-bedroom unit in the Nashville area, with all utilities included except telephone, television and Internet services, will set you back $903 a month, according to 2015 median rent figures from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A comparable place to live in the Memphis area, the state’s next-most-expensive rental market, will cost $892 per month. The Knoxville and Clarksville areas follow at $826 and $821 per month, respectively.
Across Tennessee’s 10 largest metro areas – Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Clarksville, Johnson City, Chattanooga, Jackson, Cleveland, Kingsport-Bristol, and Morristown – median two-bedroom rent averaged $776, up $25 from the 2014 median of $751 and on par with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ estimated 3.4 percent average rise in rent across all U.S. cities.
Median two-bedroom rent increased the most in Johnson City, going from $683 per month last year to $778 this year, an increase of 14 cents on the dollar. The next two largest increases, each amounting to about 7 cents on the dollar, occurred in the Memphis and Kingsport-Bristol areas.
The least-expensive area on the list is Morristown, where a two-bedroom unit rents for a median of $639 a month this year, a $40 decline compared to last year and the largest decline among all 10 areas.
About the only good news for Nashville area renters is that they won’t be absorbing much of an increase this year. This year’s median two-bedroom rent for Nashville is only one dollar a month more than last year’s.
Many of these metro areas, as defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, include surrounding cities and counties. For example, the Nashville area includes both Franklin and Murfreesboro. Some areas, like Memphis and Clarksville, even cross state borders. Here is a map showing each area, with darker red indicating higher median rent. Click an area for details: