The rent is still too damn high. That’s generally true across the U.S., but there are a select few cities where renters are especially cost-burdened. Typically, landlords look for a renter to make at least three times the monthly rent to safeguard against any financially tight months—but in some U.S. cities that’s particularly challenging considering how high rent has gotten.
Since the inception of the pandemic, national average asking rents shot up nearly 19%, according to a Moody's Analytics CRE report released earlier this month. Now, asking rents are more than $1,800 per month—but they’re much higher in certain cities than others. The rent-to-income ratio peaked in the second quarter of 2022 at 28.8%, which means that renters spent that percentage of their income on housing each month. The general rule of thumb is that renters shouldn’t spend more than 30% of their income on their rent each month, so the national average is dangerously close to that figure.
