Best Places to Buy Rental Property in Washington DC (2026)
One covered Washington DC market described on asking rental yield, 4.9 percent, using tracked home sales and rental listings; coverage explained below.
Resideline currently has enough sales and rental data for one market here, Washington DC, so this page describes that market rather than ranking anything: a gross asking rental yield of 4.9 percent. Resideline also holds 1,769 confirmed lease closes for Washington DC, with a median of $3,090 against the $2,800 asking median; the two samples are not paired, so the gap describes the samples rather than the same homes.
The ranking
| # | City | Gross yield | Median asking rent | Rentals (12 mo) | Median closed price | Closings | Sales window | Confirmed-close median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington DC | 4.9% | $2,800 | 14,837 | $685,000 | 940 | 6 months | $3,090 (1,769) |
City by city
1. Washington DC, 4.9 percent gross
Washington DC also carries a confirmed-close median: 1,769 confirmed lease closes in the last twelve months have a median of $3,090, 10 percent above the $2,800 asking median. The two samples are not paired, so this describes the samples rather than the same homes. At $685,000 to buy and $2,800 a month to rent, Washington DC yields 4.9 percent gross on 940 tracked closings. Full detail is on the Washington DC market page.
How this ranking is built
- •Cities: every Washington DC city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since September 10, 2025: 1 city qualifies.
- •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $685,000 across 940 closings.
- •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
- •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
- •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.
Sources and related pages
- •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated September 10, 2026) and rental listings since September 10, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
- •More Washington DC rankings: The Washington DC housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest Washington DC markets by closings.
- •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Washington DC city has the highest asking rental yield?
Washington DC, at 4.9 percent: a median asking rent of $2,800 against a median closed price of $685,000, on 940 closings and 14,837 rental listings. Rents and sales are separate samples, so the ratio is a screen rather than a guaranteed return on a given home.
Does the cheapest Washington DC city also have the highest asking rental yield?
On this list, yes: Washington DC has the lowest median price among the measurable cities and the highest ratio of asking rent to price. The ratio is a screen, not a matched property yield.
Are these asking rents or confirmed lease closes?
The yield column uses the median asking rent on tracked listings. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed lease closes in the window, the table also shows their median, so you can see how far asking sits from closes there. Resideline's close records blend confirmed closes with final asking rents on listings that left tracking, and about a quarter of the last twelve months are confirmed closes.
How many Washington DC cities qualify?
One, each with at least 100 tracked closings inside the city limits and 50 rental listings in the last twelve months.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.
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