Top 10 most affordable cities for renters
That’s according to a 2015 report by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies,which showed that 46 percent of renting households are spending more than the recommended 30 percent of their annual income on housing costs.
But even as rental prices rise across the country, there are still some relatively affordable markets. Personal finance company SmartAsset set out to crunch some numbers and find the cities with the most affordable rents, said AJ Smith, vice president of content strategy.
To find the country’s most affordable rents, SmartAsset used data from the 300 largest U.S. cities on ApartmentMap.com to find the average fair market price for a two-bedroom apartment in each city, said Smith. They then calculated how much a family would need to earn each year for the cost of that apartment to equal 28 percent of their income, leaving an extra 2 percent to cover utilities and other housing costs.
In addition to seeing many of last year’s most affordable cities make an encore appearance on the list, SmartAsset found that prices in some of these cities actually dropped slightly, Smith said.
For example, this year’s most affordable city was Provo, Utah, with an average fair market rent of $572 for a two-bedroom apartment. Last year, Provo ranked third with a rent of $641.
“It’s interesting to see a place like Provo that has low unemployment, high incomes and is prosperous, but we’re not seeing the rental price rise for the average person there,” Smith said.
Over time, however, rent prices in Provo may rise to meet the area’s rising income, she said.
Most of these affordable rents were found in midsized Midwestern cities, far from the country’s more expensive coasts.
10. Green Bay, Wisconsin
Rent: $701
Required income: $30,043
Green Bay dropped from the fifth-place spot to number 10 this year with an average rent increase of $47, according to SmartAsset. Known for its cheese and its NFL team, this city is also known as the “Toilet Paper Capital of the World” for its paper industry and is home to several major paper manufacturers.
9. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Rent: $690
Required income: $29,571
This is Cedar Rapids’ first year on this top 10 list. Another SmartAsset study ranked it as the nation’s best city for children last year, citing high tests scores and graduation rates and low rates of children living in poverty.
Source: cbsnews.com
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