The Memphis rental market is large, geographically varied, and cheaper on average than most U.S. metros — but it is also a market where a high share of households rent rather than own, where single-family homes are rented at unusual scale, and where there is no rent control to shape what a landlord can charge. What it looks like depends heavily on which part of the metro is in question.
Do more people rent or own in Memphis?
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey has tracked Memphis’s occupied housing units for years, and it consistently shows a renter share well above the national average for a city of its size. The exact percentage moves year to year, so a reader wanting a current figure should pull the latest ACS release for the city rather than rely on an old number repeated online.
That renter-heavy pattern is not new. It reflects the age and layout of the housing stock, the metro’s economic history, and a homeownership rate that has lagged behind national figures for decades. For background on why housing here is priced the way it is, see why housing in Memphis is cheaper than the national average and the cost of living in Memphis, with sources.
Why does Memphis have so many single-family rental homes?
Because a large share of Memphis’s older housing stock is small, detached single-family homes rather than apartment blocks, and much of it has shifted from owner-occupied to rented over the past two decades. Business and trade press covering the single-family rental industry have repeatedly named Memphis as a metro where large institutional landlords have been active buyers, citing its low purchase prices relative to achievable rents.
This is a national phenomenon that predates any single company, tracing back to the aftermath of the 2008 foreclosure crisis, when bulk purchases of distressed single-family homes by institutional buyers became a recognized strategy in several affordable Southern and Midwestern metros, Memphis among them. Readers wanting the mechanics of why the underlying purchase prices are low should see why Memphis housing is cheaper than average.
What does the rental market look like by neighbourhood?
It is not one market. Downtown, Midtown, and the suburbs function differently.
- Downtown — apartment stock is dominated by mid- and high-rise buildings, many of them conversions of historic commercial or industrial structures. The Downtown Memphis Commission, a public body that tracks residential development in the core, publishes ongoing reporting on occupancy and new units in its own state-of-downtown material.
- Midtown — a mix of older apartment buildings, duplexes, and single-family homes rented individually, reflecting the district’s dense, pre-war street grid.
- East Memphis and the suburbs (Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett) — rental stock leans toward newer apartment complexes and single-family rentals in subdivisions built from the 1970s onward.
For a fuller sense of how these districts differ beyond housing — schools, commercial character, commute patterns — see what Memphis neighbourhoods are actually like to live in and the neighbourhoods archive. Two named suburbs with their own separate identity are covered directly at what Germantown, Tennessee is and what Collierville’s Town Square is.
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Is there rent control in Memphis?
No. Tennessee state law does not provide a framework for local rent control, and Memphis and Shelby County do not set caps on what a landlord can charge or how much rent can increase between leases. This is consistent with most Southern and Midwestern states, where landlord-tenant law is set at the state level and leaves rent-setting to the market.
Lease terms, security deposit rules, and eviction procedures in Tennessee are governed by the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act as adopted by the state, which applies in counties — including Shelby County — that have opted into it. Anyone signing a lease should read the document itself rather than assume terms match another state’s norms, since protections and notice periods differ from state to state.
How does Memphis compare to national rent figures?
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes Fair Market Rent figures for every metro area annually, including the Memphis metropolitan statistical area, and these are used to set voucher payment standards under federal housing assistance programs. HUD’s figures are recalculated every year, so a specific dollar figure printed here would be stale within months — readers wanting a current number should pull it directly from HUD’s own Fair Market Rents data.
What is durable, rather than the number itself, is the shape of the comparison: Memphis rents have consistently sat below the national median in broad market surveys and in HUD’s own FMR tables, in step with the metro’s lower cost of living generally. See the cost of living in Memphis, with sources for how rent fits into the wider cost picture, including utilities and groceries.
Who is actually renting — students, workers, or families?
All three, in different parts of the metro. The University of Memphis and its surrounding neighbourhoods generate a distinct student rental submarket near the campus; downtown and Midtown draw younger professionals and empty-nesters toward apartment living; and the single-family rental stock in outer neighbourhoods and suburbs tends to house working families who may be locked out of ownership by credit, savings, or simply by a landlord owning the property they’d otherwise buy.
The university’s footprint and its effect on nearby housing demand are covered separately at the University of Memphis’s place in the city. For how the wider job market interacts with where people choose to live and rent, see how Memphis’s job market actually works.
What should someone moving to Memphis expect from the rental process?
Standard 12-month leases dominate, application requirements typically include income verification and a credit check, and security deposits are commonly set at one month’s rent, though none of this is fixed by law and varies by landlord. Large institutional single-family landlords, smaller private landlords, and apartment management companies each apply their own screening standards.
Anyone relocating from another state should expect the process to feel broadly similar to renting elsewhere in the U.S. South, with no unusual local licensing or registration steps for tenants. A fuller picture of what moving to the city involves — from housing search timing to setting up utilities — is at what it is like to move to Memphis from out of state and how utilities work in Memphis and what MLGW is.
Where can renters find current, reliable figures?
Three sources cover this ground with authority and update on a regular schedule: the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for renter share and housing costs; HUD’s Fair Market Rent tables for metro-level rent benchmarks; and the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, the state’s housing finance agency, for state-level housing data and assistance programs. All three publish directly and should be checked at the time of reading rather than through a secondhand figure.
For the wider structural context — how city and county government divide responsibility for housing-adjacent services like schools and code enforcement — see how Memphis is governed and the city-county split. For a broader sense of how the city is changing and what that means for housing demand, see what people mean when they say Memphis is changing. General living-in-Memphis coverage is collected at the Living in Memphis hub and the Living in Memphis archive.
Access Memphis is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.
Featured image: Photo by Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States, source, CC BY-SA 2.0
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