Atlanta remains an affordable city for renting a smaller apartment, despite a deluge of multifamily offerings trying to capitalize on soaring rents, a recent analysis has found. What are your chances of renting an apartment for under $1,000 in popular coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, and so forth? Forgettaboutit, basically. According to Apartments.com, those cities can't even offer studio apartments for less than $1,000 average monthly rent, while Hotlanta and a host of other "great cities" will set you up in a deluxe one-bedroom for less than that. With average rents of $966, Atlanta barely makes the sub-$1,000 cut, though. And the website's analysis of thousands of apartments shows that Atlanta's one-bedroom offerings are still more expensive than those in larger markets like Houston ($913) and Dallas ($914), on average. What's more, it's much cheaper to live the one-bedroom lifestyle in places like Cleveland ($791) and Tampa ($845). One drawback of those lower rates is that they entail actually living in Cleveland or Tampa.
It's no secret that a full-blown apartment boom is under way in Atlanta, with more than 10,000 units announced or started at more than 30 projects in the last couple of years. Most of these multifamily projects offer condo-quality units. Not surprisingly, Apartments.com's findings indicate that "location, location, location" is still paramount. "Despite the fact that we're experiencing one of the lowest apartment vacancy rates in more than a decade, apartment seekers who remain flexible by looking at a variety of neighborhoods, apartment sizes and living arrangements often end up securing the best deals," Dick Burke, president of Apartments.com, said in a press release. In other words, renting gets cheaper the farther you stray from where you want to be.
Here's the Apartments.com Top10 list, ranked in descending order of average monthly rent for a one-bedroom pad:
Atlanta -$966
Portland, Ore. - $955
Austin, Texas - $948
Dallas - $914
Houston - $913
Tampa, Fla. - $845
Cleveland, Ohio - $791*
San Antonio - $758
Phoenix - $715
Las Vegas - $693
*Rental rates imply actual residency in godforsaken Cleveland
· Atlanta ranked among Top 10 cities with apartments under $1K [ABC]
· Atlanta's deluge of deluxe apartments [Atlanta magazine]
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