Average Student Housing Rents Ranked by State: Fall 2021

To see an updated version of this map using 2023 data, click here.

Much like conventional apartment rents, student housing pricing varies widely across the U.S. The average price of a student housing bed runs higher in states with steeper conventional apartment prices, such as in the Northeast and West, and lower in the South and Southeast.

Across the core 175 universities tracked by RealPage, average effective asking rents per bed in privately owned student housing runs around $860 per month. In some states, however, that price per bed is more than double that rate. In New York state, the average student housing bed runs $2,040 per month, followed by about $1,800 in Massachusetts, $1,640 in Washington, DC and about $1,540 in California, according to RealPage Market Analytics data.

Outside of those quintessentially pricey locales, regionality plays more of a role. States in the Northeast, such as Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont, and West, such as Hawaii, Washington and Oregon, make up the next tier of pricing, from about $1,499 to $1,000 per bed per month.

States with monthly rents from $999 to $750 – which includes the national norm of $860 – include some of the states with the most massive student populations, such as Texas ($912), Florida ($927) and Arizona ($922).

The largest grouping of states is priced between $500 and $749 per month, including many Midwest and Southeast states. The three states with the biggest bargains for student housing are North Dakota ($496), Arkansas ($491) and Wyoming ($471). In other words, students in these three states pay on average less than a quarter of the monthly rent New York students pay.