Average renting costs (2024)

FAQs

How much should you make to afford $1500 rent? ›

The traditional rule of thumb is that you should try to spend no more than 30% of your gross income on rent. According to this rule, you should be making $5,000/month to afford a $1,500 apartment. With a 40-hour workweek, this works out to $28.85/hour.

If you make $75,000 a year, you can afford to spend $1,875 a month on rent. If you make $100,000 a year, you can afford to spend $2,500 a month on rent.

1. The 30% Rule Is Outdated. The 30% Rule has roots in 1969 public housing regulations, which capped public housing rent at 25% of a tenant's annual income (it inched up to 30% in the early 1980s).

The 30% Rule

Let's consider an example. Say your monthly income is $4,000. If you're using the 30% rule to determine how much you should pay in rent, multiply $4,000 by 0.3 (30%). The maximum amount of money you should spend on housing every month is $1,200 according to this budgeting strategy.

A couple can live comfortably for under $1,500 per month, including rent, utilities, dining out and incidental expenses.

The 50-30-20 rule recommends putting 50% of your money toward needs, 30% toward wants, and 20% toward savings.

Mandy Phillips, a mortgage loan originator at Vista Home Loans, ran the numbers with the average property taxes and homeowners' insurance for California to find that buyers with a $2,000 budget could afford a $301,000 purchase price. But purchasing power changes a bit when looking at properties that require an HOA fee.

According to the 30% rule, a person earning $5,000 gross per month could reasonably afford to spend $1,500 per month on rent. However, it's important to remember that this is only a guideline.

One popular guideline is the 30% rent rule, which says to spend around 30% of your gross income on rent. So if you earn $3,200 per month before taxes, you could spend about $960 per month on rent. This is a solid guideline, but it's not one-size-fits-all advice.

It is recommended that you spend 30% of your monthly income on rent at maximum, and to consider all the factors involved in your budget, including additional rental costs like renters insurance or your initial security deposit.

Is 30% rent unrealistic? ›

However, in today's economy, more than half of American renters spend more than that, and not by choice, according to research from The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Unfortunately, limiting the amount you spend on rent to only 30% of your total income is unrealistic in many cases.

If you have a large amount of debt that you need to pay off, you can modify your percentage-based budget and follow the 60/20/20 rule. Put 60% of your income towards your needs (including debts), 20% towards your wants, and 20% towards your savings.

According to this rule, a person or household should not spend more than 3 times their gross monthly income on rent. For example, if a person earns $3,000 per month before taxes, they should not pay more than $900 in rent.

As I mentioned in the intro, making $4k a month is a massive amount of money. For many people, it's enough to match or surpass their day job, which can be a life-changing event!

The traditional rule of thumb is that you should try to spend no more than 30% of your gross income on rent. According to this rule, you should be making $5,000/month to afford a $1,500 apartment. With a 40-hour workweek, this works out to $28.85/hour.

According to the 30% rule, a person earning $5,000 gross per month could reasonably afford to spend $1,500 per month on rent. However, it's important to remember that this is only a guideline.

$1,500 monthly is how much per year? If you make $1,500 per month, your Yearly salary would be $18,000.