Austin is the one big American city where rent went the other way.
Between 2015 and 2024 the metro added about 120,000 apartments — a 30% increase in supply, more than triple the national growth rate, off the back of zoning, parking and permitting reform. Rents followed. By January 2026 Austin's median rent had fallen to $1,296, roughly 4% below the national median, after peaking 15% above it in late 2021. Pew called it the steepest drop of any large US metro.
That is the backdrop for anyone looking for a furnished place here for three to six months. It doesn't mean furnished monthly stays are cheap. It does mean Austin is the rare market where you have leverage.
Here's what it actually looks like right now.
What a month actually costs
On 6 August 2026 Homads listed 46 homes for 30+ day stays inside Austin's city limits, 45 of them with a price. Asking runs from $670 a month at the bottom to a single $25,200 outlier at the top. The useful number is the middle: half of them sit between roughly $2,000 and $4,700, with a median of $3,489.
RentCafe put the conventional Austin apartment average at $1,638 as of 1 August 2026 — $1,417 for a one-bedroom, $1,812 for a two-bedroom, and down about 2% year on year. Furnished monthly homes ask roughly double that, which is the usual premium for furniture, utilities, and nobody signing up for a year.
Two things make Austin's furnished inventory different from the rest of Texas.
The bed mix is actually balanced. Thirteen one-bedrooms, twelve two-bedrooms, twelve three-bedrooms, seven four-plus. Houston and San Antonio are dominated by three- and four-bedroom houses; Austin is not. If you're one person on assignment and you've been frustrated elsewhere, this is the Texas city with real supply at your size.
Thirteen listings are under $2,000 a month — the strongest budget end of any city Homads covers at this scale. That is a direct consequence of the supply story above.
Numbers move. Everything here came off the live listings on 6 August 2026 — it's worth checking the current set before you plan around it.
Where to stay, depending on why you're here
Austin is small enough to be walkable in places and congested enough that I-35 and MoPac will still decide your day. Pick by what you need to be near.
Downtown and central — 78701, 78703. 78701 is the downtown core, the most walkable ZIP in the city and the most expensive. 78703 covers Clarksville, Old West Austin and Tarrytown — leafy, historic, quieter, still central, and inventory is thin. Both suit consultants and executives on corporate assignments who want to not own a car for three months.
East Austin — 78702, 78723. 78702 is the closest-in east side: restaurants, music, and a neighborhood that has changed faster than almost any other in the city. 78723 is Windsor Park and Mueller, the redeveloped former airport site, which is the closest thing Austin has to new-build walkable urbanism. Both are well placed for downtown without downtown pricing.
South — 78704, 78745. 78704 is Zilker, Bouldin and Travis Heights, the cultural centre of gravity and priced accordingly. 78745 sits further south, more suburban and more affordable, with a workable commute in exchange for needing a car.
Airport and Riverside — 78741. The most affordable close-in option and the one that puts you nearest Austin-Bergstrom. Sensible if you fly out most weeks, or if you're commuting southeast toward Del Valle.
Northwest and the tech corridor — 78759. Great Hills, the Arboretum, and everything around The Domain. If you're at a north Austin campus, this saves you the MoPac run twice a day. Suburban and car-dependent, and that is the trade.
The demand driver most people get wrong
If you're a host trying to work out where your next tenant is coming from in 2026, it is probably not Tesla.
Giga Texas headcount fell about 22% during 2025, to roughly 16,500. It is still one of the region's largest private employers, but it is not in a hiring-and-housing-people phase.
Samsung's Taylor fab is. The $17 billion plant about forty miles northeast is in equipment installation and qualification, with EUV testing started in spring 2026 and volume production targeted for 2027. Samsung expects around 1,500 permanent staff on site by the end of 2026 — but the number that matters for furnished monthly rentals is the other one: roughly 1,500 more engineers from ASML, Lam Research and KLA deployed to install and qualify tools. That is a transient, well-paid, months-at-a-time population, and it is on site right now.
The other thing worth knowing: 2026 is not a legislative session year. The Texas Legislature meets in regular session in odd-numbered years only. The 89th met January to June 2025; the 90th convenes in January 2027. All the lobbying, staffing and agency-contractor demand that fills central Austin for six months every other year is simply absent this year, and will return in force in January.
Why 30 days is the line that matters
Austin's short-term rental regime is one of the more involved in the country — licensing, fees, density caps on multifamily, and from 1 July 2026 a requirement that platforms show a licence number on every listing and pull unlicensed ones within ten days of notice.
None of it applies to you. Austin defines a short-term rental as a stay of fewer than 30 consecutive days. At 30 days or more you are outside the licensing regime entirely.
Tax works the same way and is worth more than people realise. Austin's local hotel occupancy tax is 11% — 9% city plus a 2% venue project tax — on top of the 6% state rate, so 17% all in. Anyone with the right to occupy for 30 consecutive days counts as a "permanent resident" under Texas law and is exempt from all of it, provided written notice is given up front. Leave it until later and the tax applies to the first 30 days before dropping off on day 31.
Does the time of year matter?
Less than the calendar suggests.
SXSW in March, ACL across two October weekends, and Formula 1 at Circuit of the Americas in late October all move nightly rates violently. They barely touch monthly rates — a host who has committed a place for 90 days is not repricing it for race week. If your dates are flexible, a stay that spans one of those windows is usually the better deal rather than the worse one.
What actually moves monthly demand is the UT calendar — the university hit a record 55,000 students in autumn 2025 — plus corporate relocation cycles and the semiconductor ramp above. And the summer, June through September, is regularly over 100°F. Ask what the electricity bill was last August before agreeing to a stay where utilities aren't included.
Who's actually renting here
Semiconductor and construction contractors on Samsung Taylor and the supplier projects around it. Weeks to months, employer-paid, and the growth story in 2026.
Tech assignments and relocations — people arriving for a role at Apple, Oracle, Dell or a startup, who need somewhere real to live while they work out which part of town they want.
University-linked stays — visiting faculty, researchers, graduate students, and families spending a semester rather than a year.
Insurance and ALE placements — households displaced by fire or water damage, placed by an adjuster, with a timeline nobody knows at the start.
One thing they have in common: none of them knows their exit date precisely at the point of booking. If you're a host here, that's the thing worth designing your listing around.
Where to start
Everything currently available for 30+ day stays in and around Austin sits on one page: Mid-term rentals in Austin, TX. It shows more than the 46 inside the city limits, because it reaches into the wider metro. Filter by beds, price and amenities, and message hosts directly — there's no commission taken on either side.
If you're new to the format, or explaining it to an employer or an adjuster, What are mid-term rentals? covers the basics.
Listing counts and prices in this article were read from live Homads data on 6 August 2026 and will change.