Bloomberg is reporting on the rising rental market in the U.S. The demand for rent has never been higher. In general people are spending about a third of their incomes on rent—the worst it has been for decades.
Rental affordability has steadily worsened, according to a new report from Zillow, which tracked data going back to 1979. A renter making the median income in the U.S. spent 30.2 percent of her income on a median-priced apartment in the second quarter, compared with 29.5 percent a year earlier. The long-term average, from 1985 to 1999, was 24.4 percent.
That percentage gets even crazier in major cities like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
Rental affordability worsened from a year earlier in 28 of the 35 largest metropolitan areas covered by Zillow. Rents were least affordable in Los Angeles, where residents devoted 49 percent of monthly income to rent. The share in San Francisco was 47 percent, 45 percent in Miami, and 41 percent in the New York metro area.
The government considers spending more than 30% of your household budget on rent to be "burdensome" and I can attest to that being true! It is burdensome!