Petersburg and Wrangell have lower rents than much of the state, but they also have very few vacant rentals. Their combined vacancy rate of 1.1% was the lowest of any community surveyed this year by the state Department of Labor.
The state’s median vacancy rate in 2026 was 5.4%.
The department’s Alaska Economic Trends Magazine published its annual rental survey this fall. It’s based on data gathered from thousands of landlords and property managers surveyed across Alaska this March.
Petersburg realtor Sarah Holmgrain said the community’s housing shortage has been a decades-long problem.
“It was like that in 2001 when I moved back,” she said. “It was like that in 1980 when my parents moved here.”
Holmgrain’s real estate agency, Petersburg Properties, manages nearly 50 rental units on Mitkof Island. She said rentals go fast once someone ends their lease.
“As soon as they’re almost out, I’ve got someone,” she said. “I keep a wait list and kind of try and go through that and see if someone has found their housing yet before I advertise. And I haven’t had to advertise in a very long time.”
Small communities with small datasets
Gunnar Schultz is an economist with the Department of Labor who wrote the report. He said that when it came to Petersburg and Wrangell’s rental vacancy trends over the past six years, “with the exception of ‘24, it’s been below the median across the survey.”
The survey combined data for Petersburg and Wrangell because the communities are so small. Schultz said that’s an important caveat — they’re two separate communities combined, both with small samples.
While the survey doesn’t cover every market in the state, it can give a snapshot of different areas. Schultz said that, at the state level, rent increases had slowed this year.
“The median rent increase for a two-bedroom apartment, which is sort of the benchmark rent that we look at, increased about 2%,” he said. “Which was the slowest over the last five years.”
Meanwhile, Petersburg and Wrangell’s average rent grew roughly 4%. But they were still the lowest among the areas surveyed, at $1,288 for a two-bedroom apartment plus utilities. The average rental price in Juneau was $420 more, at $1,708.
Low housing plus low wages
Holmgrain, the realtor, said she believes the lower rents are driven by how much people in town can actually afford.
“The rental rates aren’t as high as you see in other areas because, honestly, people can’t afford higher. So people will literally just pass on the rental,” she said. “There is a cap in this town because the wages haven’t kept pace with inflation, so it’s not keeping pace with what you would anticipate a community that has 1% vacancy rate to be able to charge.”
She said that in her experience, everyone — regardless of whether they’re living alone or have a family — struggles to find housing in town.
A local 2023 survey found that Petersburg would need to build over 300 more housing units in the next decade to meet demand. According to the report, Petersburg and Wrangell each issued six building permits for new single-family units in 2025. For Wrangell, that was the most the community had permitted in more than a decade.
And homeownership also has its own hurdles. According to the report, the costs to buy a home have risen, and the number of new mortgages has shrunk compared to before the pandemic.
Petersburg’s estimated monthly mortgage payment has roughly doubled from where it was seven years ago, growing from $996 in 2019 to $1,994 in 2025. Wrangell saw a similar jump, from $959 to $1847. Both are in line with trends across the state.
Apartment hunting on social media
In recent years, the housing crunch has made it harder for employers to fill jobs. Petersburg’s police chief has cited housing availability as one of the challenges the department has in recruiting police officers.
Jordan Miller knows her experience is an outlier — it took her less than two months to find a place to live.
Before she moved to Petersburg last month to manage a local dental clinic, her coworkers told her to look for a home on social media.
“They gave me the 411 that Petersburg uses their own Facebook pages, and those are, like, the hot places to go for all things,” she said. “Once I knew that I wanted to come to Petersburg, I very quickly joined those pages on Facebook, and then was able to put up a posting.”
She said her post yielded about a dozen leads.
Miller had a few factors working in her favor — she was living alone and doesn’t have any pets. The time of year also mattered: at least half of those leads were seasonal rentals.
She ended up signing a month-to-month lease, which could turn into a long-term rental. She feels lucky to have found a place so quickly.
“I’m just really grateful and very thankful for the willingness of the community to really step up and help a stranger,” she said.
