Sell Your Commercial Property In Auburn, AL

Who rents in Auburn

The 2020–2024 American Community Survey counts 80,594 residents in Auburn and 14,161 renter households, 46.9% of occupied homes. In Lee County as a whole the renter share is 33.7%, and about 61% of the county's 23,372 renter households live in Auburn. Auburn University is the reason: it reports 34,145 students for 2024–2025, 27,907 of them undergraduates, and 12,335 employees, including 1,435 faculty. The university sits on Interstate 85, less than 60 miles from Montgomery and about 100 miles from Atlanta, a location that also serves the automotive and aerospace suppliers in local industrial parks.

Median household income in the city is $63,668, close to the county's $65,824, but the figure blends faculty and staff households with student households that report little income.

Rents and affordability

Median gross rent is $1,098 in Auburn and $1,058 countywide. The cost-burden numbers look severe, with 54.0% of renter households paying 30% or more of income and 5,252, about 37.1%, paying half or more, but in a college town many of those renters are students with little earned income. Another 1,653 renter households have no computed ratio. For a buyer, guarantor policies and pre-leasing history are better guides to collections than these ratios.

Source: HUD Fair Market Rents, Auburn-Opelika HMFA. The city's median rent sits between HUD's one- and two-bedroom figures. Student properties often price by the bedroom, so per-unit comparisons with the FMRs work best for conventional apartments.

The apartment stock

Auburn has 36,033 housing units, and fewer than half, 17,445 or 48.4%, are detached houses. Buildings with five or more units hold 11,267 units, 31.3% of the stock, compared with 17.2% in Lee County. By size, 2,579 units are in buildings of 5 to 9 units, 4,133 in buildings of 10 to 19, 2,426 in buildings of 20 to 49 and 2,129 in complexes of 50 or more. Auburn also has 2,992 attached single-family units, many of them townhomes that compete with apartments for student renters. The city holds about 82% of the county's units in buildings of five or more.

The median unit was built in 2001, four years newer than the county's 1997 median. Downtown Auburn and the Shug Jordan Parkway corridor sit closest to campus, Moores Mill lies farther out, and Opelika is a separate city next door, home to East Alabama Health, with the same city levy as Auburn.

Auburn within Lee County

Outside Auburn, Lee County's rental housing looks very different. The county counts 13,684 units in buildings of five or more, so only about 2,400 sit outside Auburn, including those in Opelika. Manufactured homes make up 11,350 of the county's 79,619 housing units, about 14%, but only 1,327 of Auburn's. A buyer looking for scale in conventional apartments in Lee County is therefore mostly shopping in Auburn, and the competition a building faces comes from newer complexes in the same city rather than from cheaper housing elsewhere in the county.

Property taxes on apartment buildings in Lee County

Apartments are Class II property, assessed at 20% of appraised value (ADOR). The state's October 2025 millage table lists 6.5 state mills, 13.5 county mills, an 8.0-mill school total for the Auburn district and Auburn's 26.0-mill city levy, 16.0 of it for education, for 54.0 mills combined. A $2 million building, assessed at $400,000, would owe about $21,600 a year, or $540 per unit on 40 units. Opelika's city levy and school total are the same. Owners have 30 days after a valuation notice to appeal (ADOR), and the 7% HB73 cap on yearly growth in taxable value ends on a sale (ADOR). The deed tax is $0.50 per $500 of value conveyed (§ 40-22-1), about $2,000 on a $2 million sale with no assumed mortgage. Because the HB73 cap resets on sale, a building bought years ago will be taxed on a new appraisal once it changes hands, and a buyer will build that higher figure into the offer.

Landlord rules

Alabama prohibits local rent control (§ 11-80-8.1). Deposits are capped at one month's rent, with added deposits allowed for pets or alterations, and must be refunded or itemized within 60 days or the landlord owes double (§ 35-9A-201). A nonpayment notice can end a lease no sooner than 7 business days after receipt (§ 35-9A-421).

What this means if you own a building here

Auburn values hinge on how a building leases each academic year. Buyers will ask for pre-leasing history, the share of leases with parental guarantees, and how your rents compare with newer purpose-built student housing. Conventional apartments that lease to staff, graduate students and young professionals are judged more like any workforce property: occupancy, rent compared with the $1,077 one-bedroom and $1,181 two-bedroom FMRs, and condition. Skyline Capital Investments buys 5+ unit buildings in Auburn and Opelika. You can estimate your building's value or request an offer.