Key takeaways about rentership in Ohio’s largest cities:
- Major Cities Defy Ohio’s Homeownership Identity: In a state often defined by suburban and rural homeownership, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati break from the state norm as renter-majority cities, shaped by the pull of jobs, education, and big-city amenities.
- Renting is Declining, But Still Dominant in the City: Over the past decade, all three cities have seen fluctuations and dips in rentership, hinting at a potential shift toward ownership. Despite the decline, their shares of renters remain well above 50%, suggesting market stability rather than dramatic change.
- Cincinnati, Ohio’s Renter Capital: Nearly 60% of Cincinnati households are renters, almost double the statewide average. While rentership has edged down slightly in recent years, Cincinnati remains the most rental-heavy market among Ohio’s major cities, driven by the city’s large student population and strong base of young professionals.
Ohio may be a homeownership state at large, but its biggest cities tell a different story. In Cincinnati, nearly 60% of households rent their homes — almost double the statewide average of 32%. Columbus and Cleveland also remain renter-majority markets, with each having more than half of its households renting.
However, despite their consistently high levels of rentership, all three cities have shown a downward trend over the past decade: a subtle shift toward homeownership in Ohio’s urban cores. For landlords and developers, that may mean continued rental demand today, but signals a need to adapt to a market that shows signs of tilting toward buyers.
Cincinnati: Highest renter share among the state’s main hubs
Cincinnati leads the pack with the highest rentership rate in Ohio, at nearly 60%. The share is striking when compared to the state average, which hovers around 30%, meaning Cincinnati’s reliance on rental housing is nearly double that of Ohio overall.
Contributing to this sustained rental share is its large population of students and young professionals tied to the University of Cincinnati and other colleges, and rental demand. These conditions combine to keep renting more common in Cincinnati, even as overall rentership has edged downward in recent years. Over the last decade, Cincinnati’s rentership peaked in 2014 at 64.1%. Still, the city remains renter-dominated, despite the rate fluctuating and pointing to an overall downward trend.
Columbus: High rentership in a growing city
According to the latest data, Ohio’s capital and fastest-growing hub has over half of its households renting, cementing the city as a renter-majority city.
In 2014, nearly 56% of households were renters. While the share remained relatively stable across the decade, the most recent data shows a sharper decline, with rentership falling from 57.6% in 2023 to 54.1% in 2024 — one of the largest short-term drops among Ohio’s major urban centers.
Columbus’s status as a university hub and a magnet for young professionals has long contributed to its rental-heavy housing market. Still, the slow decline over the last decade suggests a move toward ownership, even as the city maintains its majority-renter profile.
Cleveland: Longstanding renter majority, even among declines
Historically one of the strongest rental markets in the state, Cleveland recorded a rentership rate of 53.9% — the smallest concentration of renters among Ohio’s largest three markets, but still higher than the state’s 32% rate. But compared with Columbus and Cincinnati, its rental share has dropped more steeply. In 2014, 60.5% of its households were renting; a decade later, that figure had dropped more than six percentage points.
Several factors help explain this sharper shift. Cleveland has been experiencing substantial population loss, which could have affected overall rental demand. At the same time, its housing stock is older than in Columbus or Cincinnati, and relatively abundant single-family homes create more paths into ownership. Together, these dynamics contribute to Cleveland’s more pronounced move away from peak rentership levels, even as the city continues to stand out as renter-majority.
A Decade of Renting in Columbus, Cleveland & Cincinnati
Looking at the 2014–2024 window, Ohio’s statewide rentership rate has remained steady at over 30%, showing little movement over the decade. The state’s three largest cities, however, all saw declines in the share of households renting:
- Cincinnati: from 64.1% to 59.9%
- Columbus: from 55.9% to 54.1%
- Cleveland: from 60.5% to 53.9%
While these declines vary in scale, the direction is consistent: all three urban centers are slowly shifting away from peak rentership levels. The decade-long dip can also be traced to demographic shifts: not only Cleveland’s ongoing population decline and Cincinnati’s slower growth compared to Columbus, but also a national trend playing out locally, as aging millennials are looking to transition from renting to ownership.
At the same time, the divide reflects Ohio’s housing geography: homeownership dominates outside the urban cores, while rentership defines the big cities, which concentrate younger residents, students, and lower-income households.
Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland remain renter-majority, but a decade of fluctuation and decline raises questions about what comes next. For today’s renters, the city still offers plenty of options; for developers and policymakers, the trend points to a housing market in transition, where balancing rental demand with rising ownership could shape the next phase of Ohio’s urban housing landscape.
Image: DnDavis; Jacob Boomsma/Shutterstock.com
Methodology
Point2Homes.com is a real estate listing portal for rental homes across the United States. Part of Yardi Systems, Point2Homes covers housing trends and news through comprehensive studies that draw from internal data, public records, governmental sources, and online research.
- For this study, we looked at rentership rates in Ohio, as well as in its three largest cities, by population.
- The report uses data on rentership evolution between 2014 and 2024, as per the U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 1-year estimates. Since ACS 1-year estimates were not published for 2020, data from the Decennial Census was used instead.
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