Average Rent in Arizona: ZIP Rents, Leasing & Tax Receipts

What the rent evidence changes for a rental decision

Use Phoenix’s improving flow balance to investigate occupied income, Tucson’s rent recovery to test its durability, and the subject’s receipts to establish spendable rent. The residential rental TPT repeal reduces a qualifying tenant’s tax charge; it does not automatically add the former charge to the owner’s base income.

Tucson apartment leasing

Positive rent growth can coexist with a substantial unoccupied share

MMG’s Q3 2026 Tucson cohort shows effective rent of $1,127, up 1.0% annually, with occupancy of 89.9%. Trailing-year absorption is 994 apartments against 451 completions. The report identifies the first positive annual effective-rent reading since early 2024.

The direction is encouraging, but 89.9% occupancy is not a property loss assumption and $1,127 is not a quote for a Tucson house. At a lower rent level, a fixed repair or utility bill can use more of the income budget even if percentage rent growth is positive.

Decision. Build a separate Tucson budget from local comparable leases and actual owner-paid utilities. Test the same dollar repair bill against the subject’s collected income, then check whether signed renewals support the proposed face rent.

What could change it. A well-occupied subject with modest turnover and verified costs may outperform the survey. A building with unresolved repairs or a weaker renewal book may lag even as the metro improves.

Records to obtain. Subject occupancy and collections, utility responsibility, current repair bids and matched signed leases; no metro average substitutes for them.

Read the source reports

• MMG Tucson Q3 2026 apartment report — Q3 2026; provider apartment cohort and effective rents; flows trailing four quarters; accessed October 24, 2026.

Compare rents across these county groups

These analyst-selected sets use the listed county labels and the same September 2026 observation month. Each ZIP receives one equal vote. They are not official metro definitions, exhaustive regions or bedroom comparisons.

10 distinct county labels appear in the current sample; geographic coverage is incomplete and uneven. Only currently available observations from the same latest month enter these comparisons. Older retained records and missing ZIPs do not enter as zero rents.

Does the verified base rent survive the actual first-year budget?

Hypothetical one-apartment budget: $1,800 monthly base rent, 7% annual vacancy/noncollection, half a free month, $6,500 recurring operating costs, $11,000 debt and $1,200 reserves. No repealed tax pass-through is counted as income. These are editable assumptions, not estimates for a Phoenix or Tucson property; initial repairs are a separate cash use.

Initial calculated result: $19,251 collected rent, $12,751 NOI before debt/reserves, and $551 cash after debt/reserves. Change the assumptions below to test your own budget.

Continue with the right geography and tool

• Arizona cap-rate research — Carry the verified income budget into a separately sourced valuation decision.
• Maricopa County market overview — Examine the published county overview without treating the Phoenix apartment cohort as a property quote.
• Pima County market overview — Keep Tucson’s local budget and county decision separate from Phoenix.
• ZIP and bedroom HUD rent reference — a different measure from asking-rent ZORI; a PHA must still establish its payment standard and approve the actual contract.
• Property income calculator — use signed comparables and actual expenses for the subject property.

Arizona rent questions

How these rent figures are calculated

State: Arizona · USPS AZ · Census state FIPS 04. Zillow supplies postal ZIP observations with city and county labels. We filter to valid positive rents in this state and the latest common observation month, sort the values, and take the middle value, or the mean of the two middle values for an even count. Means are the sum divided by included ZIPs. No population, household or rental-unit weighting is added.

The all-home, all-bedroom ZIP series is smoothed, not seasonally adjusted. A bedroom rent cannot be inferred from it. Membership can change after a refresh, so a change in this page’s median is not a matched-sample rent-growth rate. This edition does not publish a ZIP-sample growth claim.

Data: Zillow Research · ZORI method · National ZIP source CSV. The state benchmark is our ZIP-based calculation, not a provider-published statewide estimate. Occupied-unit Census rent, listing medians, effective broker rents and HUD gross-rent references answer different questions and are not blended here.

The observation month identifies the rent data available for this comparison. Historical or missing latest observations stay out of the current sample. Check the date before comparing a property with a newly advertised offer.

Market and legal sources below were reviewed 2026-10-24. Their own periods are shown next to each claim. Broker samples and boundaries are not fully disclosed; surveys may share underlying providers and should not be treated as independent experiments. The market interpretation is conditional research, not a property-level income guarantee. Recheck local rules, signed comparable leases and actual expenses before using an illustration in a transaction.