For millions of Americans living in busy cities, splitting the rent with a roommate or two is an annoying necessity to afford an apartment. However, those who want to find their own place may need to relocate.
A new study has calculated the best and worst cities in America to afford a studio apartment in. New York City ranks as the hardest place to live alone because of its sky-high rents and median wages.
Residents in the Big Apple need to earn a staggering $140,000 just to comfortably afford a studio, and central East Coast is joined by neighboring cities of Jersey City and Miami, Florida, which have the cheapest individual apartments compared to average wages .
However, among the 100 US cities that made up the study The economistthe Midwest emerged victorious, with metropolitan areas like St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Detroit offering the best value for money.
Not surprisingly, New York City is the least affordable city in America for single people
It’s no secret that the cost of living in a big city has skyrocketed in recent years.
According to the financial services company Moody’s, the average share of rental income reached 30 percent last year, the highest level in 25 years.
The study used median rents from real estate platform Zumper and wage data from the American Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the affordability of America’s 100 largest cities.
Anyone who spends more than 30 percent of their income on rent is considered “rent-burdened”. Everything else is a comfortable “affordable studio wage” based on average studio rental prices across the country as of July 2023.
By looking at this number and the different wage rates across the country, it then determined the ratio of the average salary in each city to the salary required to comfortably afford renting a studio apartment.
Cities with a ratio above one are struggling, with a score below one being a good sign that residents have a little extra money for a rainy day.
In the Big Apple, renters have been found to need to earn at least $140,000 to live comfortably alone.
That number is a whopping $82,610 more than the city’s median wage, a ratio of just 0.4.
Across the Hudson River, buying a studio in Jersey City costs a lucrative salary of $119,000, but the average wage for residents is over $61,000 less.
Also among the ten cities with the worst single living rates are Boston, Miami and Washington DC, all of which renters have to earn well above the national average to live alone.
Of the 100 cities included in the study, 57 have salaries above the national average.
This included Charlotte, North Carolina, which was one of the fastest growing cities in America in 2022, driving prices higher, reaching a ratio of 0.72.
At the other end of the spectrum, renters in Lincoln, Nebraska need to earn as little as $29,240 to afford an apartment of their own.
In Jersey City, renters must earn a lucrative salary of $119,000 to live comfortably on their own
Residents of Miami, Florida are also in one of the least affordable metropolitan areas in America, where you have to earn $45,000 more than average to afford a studio
With a $15,690 higher average city wage, it ranked first in the study as the most affordable city.
It was followed by Whichita, Kansas and Des Moines, Iowa, each with ratios of 1.45 and 1.43, respectively.
While Los Angeles and New York City have fared poorly due to their sky-high rents and cost of living, both cities have affordable options right on their doorstep.
In upstate New York, it costs over $100,000 less to comfortably afford a studio apartment in the city of Rochester.
In Bakersfield, about two hours from LA, residents enjoy some of the lowest affordable studio wages on the West Coast at $42,000.
