A high vacancy rate should put renters in the driver's seat, but the Fairbanks rental market is an example of why that's not necessarily true.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough has the highest rental vacancy rate in Alaska, at least among the 11 regions tracked by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in 2025, the most recent data available. The borough's rate has been in the top two statewide since 2023.
"As a general rule, I think that when you see high vacancy rates, you tend to see lower rental costs and vice versa," said Rob Kreiger, a senior economist with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
But that rule doesn't apply all the time, Kreiger said.
Here's why the Fairbanks rental market is an example of how that single data point can fail to tell the whole story about what it's like to look for a place to live:
Beyond the numbers
Last summer, Noelle Picard's now-former landlord gave her and her roommate one month to move out. But really, she had half that time.
"I was in the field when this happened, so it was a huge disaster," Picard said.
Picard, a graduate student studying marine biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, used a short window between out-of-town fieldwork gigs in Homer and Point Lay for the search. She said she scrambled to send out feelers and set up tours at places that seemed nice online, completely sidelining graduate school.
But when she visited those places in person, most of what she saw was underwhelming.
"They'd be pretty dirty and have, like, smells to them, or then I'd learn about previous water damage or mold issues," said Picard, who first moved to Fairbanks three and a half years ago. "It kind of just was difficult because it didn't really match up with the price we were being asked to pay, and that's kind of what I've found with all the housing I've had here."
The sudden hunt plunked Picard into a market that might seem pretty favorable for renters, at least by one metric.
The state labor department's survey of landlords last year found 13.5% of rental units in the Fairbanks North Star Borough were sitting vacant. That's more than twice the Municipality of Anchorage's rate of 5.6% and more than three times the City and Borough of Juneau's 4%.
"I mean, that says housing is easy to find, is plentiful," said Nadine Winters, the executive director of Fairbanks Neighborhood Housing Services. "I don't think that's what the reality is."
The organization aims to provide and promote safe, affordable housing in Fairbanks and offers what it calls affordable and market-rate housing for families, seniors and elders and people with disabilities. They also run programs, like one that reimburses applicants up to $50,000 for construction or repairs to turn unused or blighted properties into long-term rentals.
Fairbanks Neighborhood Housing Services has about 50 units to rent and about 100 people on their waitlist, Winters said.
"I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but I would say that a lot of people we hear from seem to be at their wit's end," she said.
There are a number of reasons the vacancy rate alone might not correspond to renters' lived experiences, according to state and borough officials.
It's worth keeping in mind that the department's survey captures a point in time, Kreiger said. It goes out once per year for a week, usually in mid-March, he said.
"From our survey, anyway, the rental vacancy rate, taken by itself, doesn't mean– it means absolutely nothing," Kreiger said. "You have to look at it in terms of proper context."
Historical and seasonal population shifts connected to tourism, the university and the two military bases in the area — Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base — can cause swings in vacancy that tighten availability, Kreiger said. But there are also just other important factors that make up a community's rental market, like what type of units are available, as well as their price point and quality, he said.
Despite the vacancy rate, average monthly rent in the Fairbanks area across all units surveyed was $1,523, according to the state labor department, meaning it's comparable to, and even slightly higher than, Alaska's two other urban cores.
Average rent in Anchorage was $1,474, and Juneau's was $1,504. When adjusted for utility costs, the gap between the Fairbanks North Star Borough and the other two municipalities widens even more, the survey data shows.
So why isn't vacancy driving prices lower?
Kellen Spillman, director of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Community Planning Department, said those averages could be a result of large apartment complexes' business models.
Those kinds of units comprise a lot of what's available in the Fairbanks area, and they "can absorb a little bit of a higher vacancy rate to be able to attract the price point that they want," Spillman said.
Like the state, Spillman's department also administers a survey to landlords, except it's only focused on the borough and goes out for one week four times per year. The data is published in a quarterly report that captures other economic indicators and more local nuance, like seasonal dips in the vacancy rate and lower numbers of larger units and detached houses.
The most recent borough data comes from March 2025, the first quarter of the year, and it shows the rental vacancy rate for the Fairbanks area at 12.2%, a little lower than what the state survey recorded, though still on the upper end of the 7% to 13% range the borough considers "healthy."
The quarterly data in years before 2025 demonstrate how much the rate can vary, even in just a few months. In June 2024, the vacancy rate was 7.4%, according to the borough report. By that December, the rate had risen to 12.8%.
Separately, the borough surveys what type of units are available, which can point to tightness in the market not clearly reflected in those rates alone. In March 2025, the survey found 124 one-bedroom units and 142 two-bedroom units available to rent, compared to 21 units that were three-plus bedrooms and a total of five detached houses.
One thing the data doesn't pick up well, though, is quality, according to Spillman. But he said they do hear about it, and not from Picard.
"We are getting a lot of comments, particularly with working closely with the Air Force, that the quality of housing unit isn't necessarily what they're finding in other communities or what they would expect on a military base," he said.
The problem's not lost on local officials, and the borough assembly recently approved significant tax breaks to try to encourage new residential construction.
Multi-family developments with units that have two or more bedrooms apiece can qualify for an exemption from borough property taxes for up to a decade. For a property with an assessed value of $10 million, that would translate to more than $1 million in savings over a 10-year period, using the borough's current mill rate.
Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins' administration proposed the incentives, in part, to account for a predicted influx of nearly 1,000 military service members and their families in the next couple of years. How well the measure works to meet the need is yet to be determined. Applications for the tax breaks are available through 2028.
Whatever elected officials rationale might be, the developers who take advantage of the incentives could also create new living options for civilians, too.
Picard probably won't be around long enough to see how that plays out: She plans to leave Fairbanks after graduate school because the cost of living as a whole, not just housing, is too high, she said.
For now, following those few frantic weeks last summer, Picard and her roommate are renting what she called a spacious place downtown. They got lucky, she said.
"There's, like, some issues with break-ins and stuff," she said. "But I find that the landlords take it pretty seriously."
Copyright 2026 KUAC