In much of the country, it’s a tough time to sell your house. Buyers are skittish, and sellers face tough competition against builders who can offer brand-new construction and below-market mortgage rates.
Faced with these tough market realities, frustrated homeowners are opting to turn their homes into rentals in near-record numbers, especially in high-supply areas like Denver, Houston, and Tampa, Fla. According to Zillow data, some 2.1% of sellers in December gave up on selling and rented out their homes instead. Those rates are just off late-2022’s record high of 2.4%.
While becoming an “accidental landlord” can be a headache for would-be sellers, their rise is something of a bright spot for renters. The influx of unexpected single-family rental inventory, combined with ongoing apartment construction, is helping keep rent growth at some of the lowest levels since the pandemic.
In McKinney, Texas, north of Dallas, real estate agent and property manager Andika Duncan has seen a flood of rentals hit the market, often from stubborn home sellers who aren’t willing to lower their prices to better compete with the area’s new construction.
The result? Rents in McKinney, and some nearby cities, are outright falling. Like prospective buyers, renters are increasingly aware of their many options. Many aren’t willing to tour rentals with poor listing photos or that check some but not all items on their wish lists.
“They skip the nice houses, and they wait for something spectacular to appear,” Duncan said.
Slowing rent growth
On average, single-family home rents are still rising nationwide, a testament to the country’s housing shortage and the appeal — or necessity — of renting relative to buying. High home prices and higher mortgage rates have kept many aspiring homeowners renting for longer, spurring additional demand.
But the 2.6% average rent increase between February 2025 and February 2026 was the smallest in Zillow’s records going back more than a decade and far below pre-pandemic averages of 4.4%.
“The rental market is a little bit more resilient because you have this higher demand for rentals,” Zillow senior economist Kara Ng said. “Part of that is offset by these landlords who are converting their would-be sales into rentals.”
Unlike their investor brethren, who typically target parts of the country where real estate is relatively cheap but rents are rising, accidental landlords often find themselves wading into less-competitive markets, Ng said.
“These landlords are not chasing markets with hot rent,” Neg said. “This was their Plan B.”
Rental and for-sale market dynamics overlap, so accidental landlords are more prevalent in parts of the country where buyers have the most power, usually where new construction has also been robust. As of last December, Houston had the highest rate of accidental landlords, with more than 4% of for-sale listings ultimately converting into rentals. Rental conversions were also elevated in cities like Austin, Texas; Miami; and Portland, Ore.
In contrast, accidental landlords are relatively rare in hotter markets along the East Coast and in the Midwest. In Providence, R.I., for example, less than 1% of all for-sale listings reappear as rentals. It also has the highest rate of single-family rent growth in the country, with rents up 6.5% year over year.
By most metrics, Tucson, Ariz., feels like a balanced market, said Bridgett Baldwin, who leads a team of real estate agents at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Arizona Properties. But the for-sale market has cooled since the low mortgage rate heyday of 2021, and many would-be sellers with little equity would rather try their hand at landlording than walk away from a sale with little cash.
For many of them, the rental math works, and qualified tenants aren’t hard to find. Southern Arizona draws snowbirds, University of Arizona students and staffers, and contract workers in the region’s mining industry.
“They want to hold on and sell when the market is better,” Baldwin said. “We have a really healthy rental market where you can, more likely than not, cover your mortgage with the rent.”
