Report: Renter Unaffordability Remains Rampant

Apartment List’s recently released 2018 Cost Burden Report offered good news and bad news. First, the good news: Nationally, the share of cost-burdened renters fell from 49.7% in 2016 to 49.5% in 2017, the sixth straight year the figure decreased. Even better is that the 2017 cost-burden rate is the lowest since 2007.

The bad news? Much of that decrease can be pinned to an influx of high-income households into the rental market. This means that the total number of rent-burdened households in 2017 was greater than the 2007 level by a total of 3.1 million.

Apartment List defines “moderately burdened” households as those spending 30%-40% of household income on rent. Severely-burdened households end up spending more than 50% of their income on rent.

Delving into the metros, Miami has the highest cost-burdened rate out of the nation’s 100 largest metros, at 62.7%. Still, Apartment List found that the median renter is cost-burdened in 20 out of the 25 largest metros, with nearly one in three cost-burdened renters live in California, New York or Florida.

Meanwhile, in a separate study, information from Rent.com noted that

It’s more expensive to rent housing in Detroit than Seattle, due to lower median annual income
New York and Boston are notoriously expensive places in which to rent
The three most affordable locations are in Texas; in Austin 24% of income goes to rent, while 23% of income in Fort Worth is dedicated to rent. Meanwhile, in El Paso, 21% of income pays for rent.