Two-Bedroom Rents Are Falling in the Twin Cities — Is Your Duplex Priced Right?

HousingLink released its July rental briefs for Minneapolis and St. Paul, and there are some cautionary signs for duplex owners.

Rents are down year-over-year in both cities, and the pool of qualifying renters is widening as a result.

This isn’t a 5-alarm fire. None of this is dramatic. It’s just a quiet shift that should inform how you price your next vacancy and screen applicants.

Both cities posted year-over-year rent declines across every unit size. In St. Paul, one-bedroom median rent fell from $1,200 to $1,095, a 9 percent drop, and two-bedroom rent fell from $1,521 to $1,382. Three-bedroom rent held up better, down only 2 percent, from $1,950 to $1,918.

Minneapolis saw milder movement on the small units: one-bedroom rent slipped 3 percent, from $1,130 to $1,100, and three-bedroom rent also fell 3 percent, from $1,950 to $1,900. Minneapolis’s two-bedroom segment was the outlier, down 8 percent year over year, from $1,570 to $1,450.

If you own a two-bedroom unit in either city, watch this segment most closely. It’s absorbing the largest rent declines in both markets. Owners coming up on the end of a lease should not be surprised to find the renewal number to be lower than what was projected.

Using the standard 2.5-times-rent screening rule of thumb, the income required to qualify for a two-bedroom unit dropped from roughly $3,803 to $3,455 in St. Paul, and from about $3,925 to $3,625 in Minneapolis. One-bedroom qualifying income came down to $2,738 in St. Paul and $2,750 in Minneapolis.

Of all currently vacant units, Housinglink’s “other” category, which includes condos, duplexes, and townhomes, shrank in share. In St. Paul, duplexes, condos, and townhouses went from 17 percent to 13 percent of all vacancies, and Minneapolis went from 19 percent to 16 percent. Apartment buildings picked up the difference, climbing to 84 percent of St. Paul vacancies and 75 percent of Minneapolis vacancies.

Minneapolis’s brief includes a rental housing stock section that St. Paul’s doesn’t. As of the second quarter of 2026, the city had 117,718 licensed rental units, up three percent from a year earlier. Of those, 23,267 units sit within 1- and 2-unit licenses, the category that captures most owner-occupied duplexes and small non-owner-occupied duplex holdings. That figure grew one percent year over year.

If you’re pricing a vacancy this fall, benchmark against the current numbers rather than last year’s asking rent, especially if you have a two-bedroom unit. If you’re screening applicants, you may also want to recalculate your income minimums to the current qualifying figures so you’re not needlessly narrowing the pool.