This Is What $1,500 Rent Gets You in America’s Biggest Cities

Published

April 5, 2023

Brooke Niemeyer is the former Deputy Managing Editor – Syndication for Credit.com. She writes about a variety of personal finance topics, with work featured on ABC, CBS, TIME, The Huffington Post, MSN, FOX Business, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance and other publications. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and was a reporter for NBC before joining the Credit.com team. You can follow her at @RNYBrooke.

When it comes to renting a home, whether it’s an apartment or house, there are many things you likely consider, from how much natural light it gets to if pets are allowed. And you probably think about several aspects of the location, like how safe the area is, how close it is to work and what important amenities are nearby.

You probably also have an idea of how much room you’d like to get in exchange for that monthly rent check. But what if you could pay the same amount and get more space, would you do it? Only caveat: You may have to move to a new city.

Where Your Money Goes Further

RENTCafé, a nationwide apartment search site, decided to figure out how much space you can get for your money throughout the country. To do this, RENTCafé analyzed apartment size data (provided by Yardi Matrix) and rent data across all multifamily rental properties of 50 or more units in the 30 most populated cities in the U.S.

And, based on their established average price per square foot in these 30 cities, RENTCafé issued a report explaining how much space you could get for a monthly rent of $1,500.

10 Cities Offering the Most Square Footage for Your Money

Memphis, Tennessee: 1,948 square feet
Oklahoma City: 1,786 square feet
Indianapolis: 1,724 square feet
El Paso, Texas: 1,667 square feet
Columbus, Ohio: 1,667 square feet
Louisville, Kentucky: 1,648 square feet
Jacksonville, Florida: 1,579 square feet
Las Vegas: 1,546 square feet
Phoenix: 1,415 square feet
Fort Worth, Texas: 1,389 square feet

10 Cities Offering the Least Square Footage for Your Money

New York: 271 square feet
San Francisco: 342 square feet
Boston: 399 square feet
San Jose, California: 526 square feet
Washington: 558 square feet
Los Angeles: 570 square feet
Seattle: 607 square feet
Chicago: 641 square feet
San Diego: 698 square feet
Philadelphia: 820 square feet

Not surprisingly, New York is reported to give you the least amount of space for your $1,500 per month rent check, with Memphis providing the most space. With those numbers in mind, you’d potentially get more than seven times the space in Memphis than in Manhattan without paying more, according to the report. Put another way, a New York studio you’d rent could likely fit in the living room of the Memphis house you’d get for the same amount of money, the report notes.

But many people are (obviously) willing to give up the yard and space to live in the concrete jungle, so it all comes down to preference.

Budgeting for Your Next Apartment

No matter which city you opt to call home, potential landlords will likely look at a version of your credit report as part of your rental application. Because of this, it’s a good idea to review your credit before applying for a new rental property so you know where your credit stands.

When you pull your credit reports — which you can do for free once each year on AnnualCreditReport.com — it’s a good idea to review them for any errors. If you discover your credit is in trouble because of problems on your reports, there are steps you can take to fix your credit. (As your scores rebound, you can keep an eye on them by viewing two of your credit scores for free, updated every 14 days, on Credit.com.)

To help you build and maintain good credit over time, it’s a good idea to pay all your bills on time (including your rent), keep your debt levels low and limit new credit inquiries.

[Offer: If you’re trying to rent an apartment, and don’t want to go it alone, you can hire firms like Lexington Law to help you manage the credit repair process. Learn more about them here.