Which Cities are the Least Affordable?
It turns out that plenty of places are shockingly unaffordable for renters. In Miami, Cambridge, and Boston, fewer than 10% of the rental listings are affordable on a the average salary.
For context, Miami’s annual mean salary is close to $59,000, and the Boston-Cambridge area comes in at $80,000 a year. These places are also expensive for homeowners, with both Boston and Miami being in the 10 most expensive cities in the U.S. to buy a home in.
Here are the results for all cities in CashNetUSA’s study, sorted from most to least affordable:
Note: Data current as of August, 2023.
Joining Boston and Miami in the most unaffordable cities is Chula Vista in California, where exactly one in 10 the rental listings could be classified as affordable. That’s fewer than New York’s results (11.63%).
California has four of the top 20 most unaffordable cities for renters, and ranks fifth in the list of states by income inequality.