RentLens updates: August 2026

August was the month the free market pages grew up. Charts, search, favourites and same-day data refreshes all landed — plus a ground-up pass on how RentLens works on a phone.

What’s new

Rent history and forecast charts on every market page. The public pages at rentlens.co/rent no longer just quote a number — each of the 700+ metro and 50 state pages now plots the market’s rent history alongside where it’s headed, with timeframe controls so you can zoom from the last year out to the full series. Still no account required.

Favourites, and search. Tap the heart on any metro or state page to follow that market, and it appears in a “Your favourites” strip at the top of /rent the next time you visit — so the five markets you actually care about are one click away instead of a scroll through 700. A search box on the hub page finds any market by name, and every forecast link now opens the interactive Explorer already focused on the metro or state you came from.

RentLens on a phone. The Explorer got a proper mobile pass: the map now frames the whole country when it opens on a phone instead of dropping you mid-continent, the layer and panel controls are discoverable rather than hidden, pinch-to-zoom is signposted, and the Rent Data view is available on small screens again. Hundreds of additional metro areas — smaller, micropolitan markets in particular — now draw their own boundary on the map.

Market pages refresh the moment new data lands. Our data pipeline now rebuilds every market page the instant a new monthly release is processed, so the figures on a metro page are always the ones our forecasting engine produced in its most recent run — no waiting for the next refresh cycle to catch up. Each page also states plainly which property types its figures cover.

For Pro and Business subscribers. Metro pages now unlock the complete 12-month forecast trajectory in place for Pro subscribers — no bouncing back to the dashboard to see past the free preview. Business subscribers can export any market page’s underlying series straight from the page.

Market pulse

The typical US metro rent sits at $1,548 as of July 2026, up +3.5% ▲ year-over-year across the markets we track consistently over that period. Rent growth has held its footing through the summer rather than fading, which is the more notable story after several years of spring-into-fall deceleration.

Looking forward, our proprietary ML models expect 746 of 750 tracked metros ▲ to be more expensive twelve months from now than they are today, averaging +3.6% ▲ — with only a handful of heavily-supplied markets projected to give ground. Which markets those are, how confident the forecast is in each, and the full month-by-month trajectory are what a Pro subscription opens up.

Explore the interactive forecast at rentlens.co →