How much is your rent/mortgage

[tom edward]

Recently married last June and we pay 325 for rent and only have to pay electrical. comes out to about 10percent of our income annually. Im interested in knowing if others are able to find rent this cheap. It is a small one bedroom apartment but we need no more then that. The way we see it if we want to upgrade to a house, renting will suck at least another 15 to 20 percent annually out of us depending on the utilities. Houses with maybe 2 bedrooms around us are usually 650 amonth utilities not included. We will not pay that for a rental, thats why we are saving up for a home in the next couple years.

[skip17py]

Mortgage/Taxes/Insurance for my family is $1080. It equates to roughly 15% of our monthly gross. I would be unlikely to find a decent rental for the price you pay where we live.

[tom edward]

Ive seen a bunch of articles on budgets for minimum wage earners and such. They always seem to use really high rents. The one article used somewhere in texas i think and was supposed to be the most affordable but was still double what i pay. I looked at other cheaper apartment that were bigger. Those went for 275 i think everything included and had garage space you could rent. Im in northwest wisconsin which is all rural.

[feh]

Recently married last June and we pay 325 for rent and only have to pay electrical. comes out to about 10percent of our income annually. Im interested in knowing if others are able to find rent this cheap.

Without checking national averages, I'd say your rent is extremely inexpensive.

I live in an area that is probably pretty average for housing costs, and our one bedroom apartment was $440/month, 25 years ago.

[rennigade]

Rent is $1150 for a 1 bedroom. Sadly its one of the cheapest places we could find.

[cooliemae]

We pay about $500/month for a house without utilities which is about average for the area we live in. For me, I think the rent is a little high, but we make up for it with the fact that we live about 1/2 mile from work and would pay about another $100-$150 a month for gas if we lived elsewhere. We live/work in a rural area and work separate shifts which is why the gas would be so much.

[disneysteve]

OP, it sounds like you live in an extremely inexpensive area. In more metropolitan areas, rents over $1,000 for basic apartments are pretty standard.

We own our home. Our mortgage with PITI is a little under $1,300.

[hamchan]

We are paying 1125 for a 600 sq ft one bedroom. All of the utilities except phone/cable/internet are a flat 95 per month. That is pretty inexpensive for our area (a few blocks from downtown Seattle). I think the lowest I have ever paid in rent was 295 a month for a really horrible single room occupancy hotel. That was over 15 years ago in a smaller city in Alaska. You couldn't even live with roommates for 325 a month here. Roommate ads I have seen are a minimum of 500 and most are much more. I rented a room in a house outside of Seattle for 700 a few years ago. It had a private 3/4 bath and kitchenette. My daughter was 10 at the time. You can also rent a tiny tiny efficiency (like 125 sq feet) for 550-650 a month. You could maybe make that work for two people, but it would be close quarters for sure. We have three people in our apartment, two adults and a teenager. My daughter's room is a walk in closet.

[hamchan]

Oh, our rent is about 18% of our gross pay.

[LizfromtheBronx]

$325 for a one bedroom apartment?! Wowsers. (I'm in NYC, so my perceptions are obviously very skewed).

I currently have a SWEET deal for the area....I sublet from a friend who owns her apt free and clear, so i pay the expenses on it (co-op, so there's a monthly maintenance fee). I pay $1164 to her directly, which includes maintenance (my "rent"), cable/internet, and half of the storage space that she and I share (although technically only her things are in there - it's worth it for me to split storage with her to not have to live with her things, which are not to my taste). I pay the electric bill as well, which was $75 last month.

This is for a large (approx 600 sq feet) studio in a doorman building in a very nice neighborhood in Manhattan. Market rate on this apartment is around $2400, not including cable or utilities. The "rent" portion is 19% of my gross.

I'm planning on staying here for as long as I can (ie, my friend is in LA for work, and my life situation allows for it). When she comes back, I plan on moving to a neighborhood where the rent on a 1 bedroom is around $1300.

[hamchan]

Our rent is very low for our location also. It is not uncommon at all for people here to be paying 30-40% of their gross income toward housing.

[JulieAlbright]

Well my mortgage (payment + tax escrow + insurance) is around 20% of our take home pay - not including bonuses. I don't have the energy right now to give figure it out of our gross income but that gives you a general idea. It isn't really relevant to compare my situation to yours though because I have a much bigger house, a number of family members living in it, and nearly 2 acres of land.

Now my son pays $635 a month in rent and the only utility included is water. It is a 1 bedroom, 1 living room, small kitchen area and bathroom. I'd guess maybe 400 square feet. I don't know what percent it is for his and his girlfriends take home but I'd guess around 15%. It is in a large metropolitan city though.

[greenskeeper]

My mortgage w/ taxes etc comes to $1453/mo. We throw on average an extra $1000 towards the principal each month. 30 year note on schedule to be paid off in 12

[snafu]

$ 325. for an apt. is real deal. University students who rent a room in someone's house with kitchen 'privileges,' shared bathrm pay around $ 700. a month here. A studio apt. [no separate bedrm] in an inconvenient location with the hassle of street parking, poor public transportation heat only, starts at $ 1,000. and there is a long list of extra 'fees.'

[HappySaver]

Mortgage: $2400