In Search of the World’s Best City for Renters—Rental Affordability in the Finest Cities Around the Globe

The question is simple: what are the world’s best cities for renters? Coming up with an answer is where things get somewhat more complicated — what sets a good city apart from the rest, after all? Something most of us can agree upon is that a great city must present a good deal of opportunities to its population. It also certainly doesn’t hurt if you can afford to live there.

We already looked at the rents in the top global financial centers recently and analyzed cities around the Globe as well as our own San Francisco and Washington, DC, to name a few. But this time we wanted to show you the world from a wider angle — not restricted to cities with outstanding activity in the financial sector, and bring into the equation the affordability of local housing prices too.

In its latest Cities of Opportunity report, global professional services firm PwC has set up what is basically the shortlist of the world’s best cities to work and live in. Their top 30 ranking is the result of an in-depth analysis of the most prosperous global business, finance and culture capitals, which looks at 10 different indicators—including but not limited to infrastructure, intellectual capital, sustainability and ease of doing business—, all of them essential for a great environment. With the list in our hands, our job was to find out how much money people earn in these cities and whether these salaries are enough to afford a rental apartment.

First, let’s see what PwC considers to be the world’s best Cities of Opportunity:

The next logical step was to check out the average rents in these markets, as well as the median incomes, and calculate the rent-to-income ratios. For this, our analysts aggregated rent and income data from various sources. For U.S. cities, we used our internal rent data (click to see the average rent in Chicago, for example) and the income figures from the public databases of the US Census Bureau. (See the methodology for more details and the list of data sources for each market.)

Rent-burdened much? See how these cities rank by housing affordability

Traditionally, housing costs exceeding 30% of the household income have been viewed as a red flag, so this is also what we adopted as our first threshold. Thus, we looked at the cities where the average rent was 30% or less of the local median household income to be burden-free. We also divided the remainder of the list into two: moderately (31%-50% rent to income) and severely rent-burdened cities (upwards of 51%).

Here’s how lasts become firsts, and firsts become also-rans:

This twist on the data puts things into a wholly different perspective. Granted, London sliding back 21 places when ranked by rental affordability is the sort of thing you may have expected to see. But what’s more impressive is that seven out of the top 10 most affordable cities of opportunity were catapulted there straight from the lower third of the initial ranking.

Kuala Lumpur, Moscow and Johannesburg win the day as the most affordable cities of opportunity

A stunning slingshot maneuver launched this odd trio to the top, from the 20^th, 22^nd and 24^th places of the original ranking, respectively. Still, the two South American markets on the 4^th and 5^th places, Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro, have moved the farthest from their original positions — 22 places up from 26^th and 27^th.

A great city is not necessarily unaffordable (although the best of them tend to be)

Surely, great cities come with price tags to match, as the all-important opportunities they offer must be paid for somehow. Therefore, paying the rent must be painful — or so you may have been led to believe.

[bctt tweet=”Apartments in the best cities are expensive, so renters must make some sacrifices. Right? Well…” username=”RentCafeapts”]

Notice that in 13 of these coveted cities, the rent-to-income ratio is comfortably below that 30% threshold. And although Tokyo, Hong Kong and Madrid technically fall into the moderately rent-burdened category, people in these cities still spend less than one-third of their income to pay the rent. If you look at it this way, renting an apartment in more than half of the world’s cities of opportunity shouldn’t be an issue. Then again, we are talking about cities of opportunity, and what would be the use of all those opportunities if only a lucky few could afford to actually utilize them?
And this brings us to the lower end of the list:

Mexico City, Manhattan and Lagos are the least renter-friendly cities of opportunity in 2017

Although opportunities are plentiful in these cities, no amount of indulgence is enough to overlook the rent burden issue. Renters in Mexico City, Manhattan and Lagos face severe rent burden, meaning that the rent takes up more than half of a household’s income each month (60%, 59% and 57%, respectively). In other words, in an average family with two earners, one of them works only to pay the rent, and that’s still not enough. Renters in Los Angeles also cash out 47%, almost half of their hard-earned dollars on rent each month — and the situation is not that much better in Paris (46%) or Singapore (44%) either.

For a quick flyby of the most rent-burdened cities of opportunity, check out the video below:

Access to the great opportunities these cities offer requires some compromises. At least in the very best of them, it’s safe to argue that rental affordability is not a major charm. You’ve got to give something to get something — that’s just the way things work and there’s not much to do about it. The good news is that there are plenty of other great cities with a fertile ground for growth and success, but where renting an apartment is not an issue at all.

The following interactive table allows you to sort the cities by many different factors. Click on the header of each column to change the order of the entries.

Methodology

• For the initial list of the world’s top cities of opportunity we used PricewaterhouseCoopers’ ranking, as published in the latest issue of their Cities of Opportunity report.
• All rent prices in this study represent the overall average rents or their US Dollar-equivalents (adjusted for inflation as necessary).
• The income figures are rounded to the nearest hundred, and the rent values to the nearest ten.
• For the sources of average rent and median household income data for each city included in this study, follow the links in the section below:
  Rents: Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Bogotá, Chicago, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manhattan, Mexico City, Milan, Moscow, Mumbai, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto
  Incomes: Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Bogotá, Chicago, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manhattan, Mexico City, Milan, Moscow, Mumbai, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto