December 4, 2008

Rental rates in various US cities

Nationally the Census has data on 2007 for housing costs. The median costs for rent in the US are $625 for 1 bedroom, $716 for 2 bed and $876 a 3 bed. Nationally there is a wide variation in rents from city to city.

This page RentalRates shows the average apartment rents for major US cities from 2006.
It shouldn't be a surprise that New York City and San Francisco are at the top of the list. Living in those cities is very expensive.

This Businessweek article on AOL featured the 20 big cities with the cheapest rents. That data is a couple years old. The article cites different rent values for new and older (cheaper) apartments. Oklahoma City came out the cheapest big city with rents of $612 to $723 range. Birmingham Alabama was second on the list at $606 to $738.

Another measure if you want to find typical/average rent for a specific city or county is the HUD's Fair Market Rents. The FMR is a average cost that the HUD uses to set housing subsidy rates. But its a good measure to figure average rents in a given city. The schedule for 2009 has the FMR rates for different sized rentals in various cities across the nation. So you can look up cities like Little Rock Arkansas where a 1 bedroom would go for about $610 or Saginaw Michigan where a 1 bed would go for about $532.

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