Update: How Much Space Does $1,500 Rent You in the 100 Most Populous US Cities?

Ever wondered what your rent would be worth in another city? You know, just to see if the grass is greener… But how do you measure whether you’ve made a good deal or not anyway? By price? By space? How about both? We did some digging a while ago to see what apartment value you would get for $1,500, depending on where you go in the 30 largest US cities. For the sake of simplicity, we substituted value with square footage—based on the average price per square foot data in each city, courtesy of our friends over at our sister company Yardi Matrix.

As it proved to be a smashing success, we thought we could kick it up a notch and respond to the numerous requests from renters all over the nation. So we included a total of 100 cities in the research this time! And to give it another twist, we also added a calculator so that you can really see what else you could rent with the money you cash out each month.

First things first, here’s the lovely and improved infographic with all the data. Hover over the tiles and see how much space $1,500 gets you in the 100 most populous US cities:

We paid special attention for the proportions in the above infographic to be correct—meaning that if the tile representing St. Louis is double the size of, say, Long Beach, it’s because you get exactly twice as much space in the Gateway to the West for the same amount of money. And so forth… For example, the four-bed, three-bath home you could rent for $1,500 in Memphis or Wichita is seven times the size of the hypothetical Manhattan studio that you’d get for the same amount of cash. In other words, even its living room is larger than some micro units in NYC:

The following interactive table displays the same information in a more old-fashioned way. Furthermore, you can sort the cities by their average apartment size and average rent too.

How much floor space can you get for $1,500?

*New York City refers to Manhattan

What does this look like in the field?

If you’ve read this far, you are probably starting to have a vague idea about how wildly property values can vary from one city to another. As it turns out, you don’t even have to go very far to see a considerable difference—the average price per square foot can show significant fluctuations in the same state.

Here’s the sunny Florida for example:

Our magic number of $1,500 gets you a decent one-bedroom apartment in the Fontainebleau neighborhood South of Doral in Miami. Apparently, the same amount is enough for more than 1,200 square feet of space in a Tampa two-bedroom apartment, or a three-bed two-bath wonder of about the same dimensions in Orlando.

Go to the Pacific coast and the value of your money is cut right in half:

In San Francisco, the same amount of cash is barely enough to rent a studio. The nearby Oakland is a bit more wallet-friendly, if you can call it that, but the one-bedroom you could afford with $1,500 is still a meager 500-550 square feet at best. In Irvine you get a bit more wiggle-room than that—about 620 square feet. Remember, these are averages we’re talking about, so with a bit of effort put into your research, you’re likely to find better deals, and our last example is a testament to that.

Who is RentCafe and How Did We Compile the Data?

• RentCafe is a nationwide apartment search website that enables renters to easily find apartments and houses for rent throughout the United States.
• To compile this report, RentCafe’s research team analyzed apartment size and rent data across all multifamily rental properties of 50+ units across the 100 largest US cities by population.
• Apartment size data was provided by Yardi Matrix, an apartment market intelligence source and RentCafe’s sister company which researches and reports on all multifamily properties of 50+ units across 121 markets in the United States.