Two recent reports on housing costs show that America’s second largest city is the most expensive place to live.
People walk in a Los Angeles neighborhood with downtown in the background on Dec. 31, 2010.
ROBYN BECK / Getty Images / Via undefined
This week, a report from real estate website Zillow broke down the housing costs in major U.S. cities. It revealed that renters in Los Angeles pay the highest percent of their income on housing.
The Southern California metropolis even beat out places infamous for their rents like San Francisco and New York City.
The graph below shows that renters in L.A. pay an average of 48.9% of their income on housing. By comparison, people in New York and northern New Jersey spend an average of 41.3% of their income on rent, while in San Francisco the average is 46.7%.
Graph showing the the percent of income spent on rent.
Jim Dalrymple via Zillow data
The problem isn't that L.A. has the highest rents in the U.S. It doesn't.
Instead, it means that L.A. has the highest rents relative to the median income of its residents. This is an idea known as "cost burden."
All of these numbers represent a sharp increase from the historical average between 1985 and 2000, when people in most cities (but not L.A.) were spending less than a third of their income on rent. In other words, it's getting more expensive to rent across the U.S.
The Zillow report also notes that while renting is getting more expensive, buying a house in many cities is relatively affordable. However, L.A. is not one of those cities.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1PfJG63
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