Where can apartment renters get the most for their money? NC cities ranked on new list
Renters are looking for space to spread out during COVID-19 — and some North Carolina cities offer more bang for your buck, a new report finds.
High Point residents enjoy the most space, while Chapel Hill residents have the least amount of room in apartments that cost $1,200 a month, according to rental website Rentcafé.
Raleigh and Charlotte also ranked among the cities offering the smallest footprints for that price, results released earlier this month show.
To come up with the findings, Rentcafé said it looked at the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh metro areas to study 36 cities that had a “statistically relevant sample size of apartments.” Analysts weighed thousands of apartments and properties to determine North Carolina’s average rent, which is roughly $1,200.
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For that price, High Point had the largest apartments, with 1,266 square feet of living space.
“The city has an average rent of $906 — one of the lowest in North Carolina — making this community of almost 112,000 people an affordable and desirable place to live,”Rentcafé said in its report.
Other cities where $1,200 stretches the furthest were Asheboro, Statesville, Salisbury and Clemmons.
At the opposite end of the spectrum was Chapel Hill, where an apartment at that rent has 794 square feet of space. On average, rents in the college town are more than $1,400, results show.
Rounding out the list of top cities where $1,200 doesn’t go as far are Charlotte, Matthews, Huntersville and Raleigh.
“The least space you can get for the same money in North Carolina is usually in cities where rents are higher, but overall the quality of apartments is better and they are generally considered to be more desirable locations,” Rentcafé said.
The list was released as work-from-home requirements and public health warnings have kept many Americans inside. During the unknowns of the coronavirus pandemic, renters are increasingly considering cost-saving options and places with more space, McClatchy News reported in February.
With the changing trends, Raleigh was recently named the “roommate capital” in a nationwide report that weighed places that offer the best balance of apartment costs and space.
And last month, Greenville in Eastern North Carolina topped a list of the trendiest U.S. cities for Generation Z renters. In those rankings, RentCafé said younger adults are flocking to cities that are smaller and affordable.
In the latest report, the rental website said North Carolina renters can get an average of 950 square feet of space for $1,200. That’s “considerably more than the 711 sq. ft. you can rent for the same amount in the top 100 most populous cities” in the country, data show.
This story was originally published March 31, 2021 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Where can apartment renters get the most for their money? NC cities ranked on new list."
