Q1 2026 Leasing Trends & Benchmarks

Lead volume is up sharply heading into summer — from a median of 16 leads per leased property in Q4 2025 to 22 in Q1 2026. Days on market held flat at 32. Conversion rates dipped slightly as teams worked through the higher volume, but the net effect on leasing speed was nothing.

In our Q1 2026 Leasing Data & Trends Report, we analyzed thousands of scattered-site properties across the leasing funnel, from marketing through application submission. Here's what changed, what didn't, and what to watch as the busy season ramps up.

Days on market: Flat, but pricing matters more than ever

Average days on market held at 32, effectively flat from Q4 2025. The DOM since latest price change came in at 20 days, meaning once owners brought price in line with market, the property leased about three weeks later.

Lead volume: Up sharply, with a clear geographic and bedroom shift

The median lead volume per leased property rose from 16 in Q4 to 22 in Q1 — the biggest quarter-over-quarter jump we've tracked. That's a strong tailwind heading into summer, but the leads aren't landing where you might expect.

The geographic shift from Q4 continues. The Midwest is outperforming, with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri pulling in disproportionate lead volume. St. Louis is on fire. Meanwhile, the traditional fast-leasing states — Texas, Florida, Arizona — are lagging what they'd typically see this time of year.

Property type matters too. Single-family pulls in a median of 23 leads before leasing. Condos sit at 15, and small multifamily at 16. Duplex/triplex actually leads the pack at 24. If your portfolio leans toward condos or apartments, expect those to lease slower than the headline averages suggest.

Lead sources: Zillow softened, cross-selling and your website outperformed

Zillow is still the 900-pound gorilla in the room — 55.4% of new leads, 56.5% of completed showings, and 55.3% of submitted applications. But Zillow lead volume was down 5.2% from Q4.

Cross-selling through RentEngine generated 8.1% of new leads but converted to 12.4% of submitted applications, and 15.4% of completed showings. When a prospect comes in for a property that's not available or not a fit, routing them to another property in your portfolio is one of the most effective free marketing channels available.

Scams: The anatomy of a modern rental scam

Summer is open season for rental scams, and the playbook has changed. Three patterns are worth knowing.

ID fraud is the simplest and least common — an applicant uses someone else's ID or lies on a pre-screening. Low sophistication, low prevalence. The countermeasure is ID and selfie verification, which catches the selfie-to-ID mismatch.

Scammer-led scams were the dominant model for years. The scammer poses as the property manager on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, completes the pre-screening themselves to gain access to the property, and then poses as the leasing agent to collect deposits from victims onsite. Medium sophistication, medium prevalence, and declining as countermeasures have improved.

A close cousin: appliance theft. Low sophistication but high prevalence. The applicant runs a quick pre-screening, gets into the property as if they were a prospect, takes the appliances, and moves on to the next listing.

Victim-led scams are the new state of the art — high sophistication, high prevalence, and growing fast. The scammer posts a fake listing on Facebook Marketplace at a below-market price, claims to be the owner who "fired the property manager," and instructs the victim to ignore the actual PM. The scammer then directs the victim to the real scheduling link from the PM's website, has them complete the pre-screening themselves, and stays on the phone with them through the showing — collecting application fees and deposits before the victim realizes what's happened.

A few patterns worth knowing:

• Craigslist is largely dead as a scam channel. Almost all rental scams now originate on Facebook Marketplace, which has no verification requirements for posting rental listings.

• Grainy photos are the tell. Scammers screenshot listings from Zillow, so the resolution drops. The asking price is also typically lower than the real listing to drive volume.

• The marketing description rarely matches between the real listing and the scam version.

Showings: Self-guided consistently wins

Self-guided showings outperformed accompanied showings across the entire funnel in Q1. The data was unambiguous.

The funnel comparison:

Self-guided completes twice as many showings as accompanied (28% of all leads versus 14%). The driver is availability — prospects can book any time, day or night, while accompanied scheduling has to work around the agent's calendar, drive time, and any reschedules. Self-guided also has almost no operational cost on reschedules, so a rescheduled showing usually still happens.

Two other findings worth flagging:

Self-guided unlocks weekend showings. 14.2% of self-guided showings happen on Sunday, versus 5.1% for accompanied — because most agents aren't working Sundays. Saturday is the single most popular showing day.

Same-day matters. Self-guided showings are scheduled with a median lead time of 15.2 hours. For accompanied, it's 60.7 hours — four times longer. Showings scheduled within 24 hours complete more than 60% of the time. As the lead time stretches past a week, completion rates drop below 20%.

If you've been considering self-guided showings, summer is the time to try it.

AI: 36% of applications submitted without a human

The most striking number in Q1 came out of RentEngine AI. For teams with AI enabled, 36.1% of submitted applications came from prospects who never once required a team member to step in. The AI answered their questions, scheduled the showing, followed up after, and handled the application request.

The leasing speed difference is just as material: teams with AI enabled saw median days on market drop from 35 to 31. The context that matters is that 53% of leads arrive after hours, and 48% of showings are scheduled after hours. AI is what closes the response-time gap on the half of inbound traffic that lands when a leasing team isn't online.

Q1 brought the biggest jump in lead volume we've tracked. It also brought a more sophisticated set of scams, a wider penalty for pricing wrong, and the first quarter where AI handled a meaningful share of applications end-to-end. We'll see you back here in July with Q2.