For $1,500 a month, Arlington residents can typically rent an apartment of just 476 square feet.
Not surprisingly, given the overall cost of rent in the county, this is one of the lowest square-footage totals for $1,500 to be found anywhere in the country.
A new RentCafe survey of rental costs found that, nationwide, renters can get an average 715 square feet of apartment space for a monthly rent of $1,500.
In 63% of the 200 largest U.S. cities, apartment-seekers can get even more space than that. But not in Arlington, where the cost of housing means that $1,500 will rent only about two-thirds the space as the national average.
Arlington’s square footage was slightly more than that of D.C., where $1,500 equates to renting 443 square feet, but lower than that of Alexandria, where $1,500 translates to a much more comfortable 572 square feet.
Drive downstate and — no surprise — a rental dollar goes far further.
In Richmond, $1,500 equates to 828 square feet of space. Move down to the Hampton Roads area, and you get even more: 856 square feet in Virginia Beach, 863 in Chesapeake, 888 in Norfolk and a spacious 1,010 square feet in Newport News.
None of the data was a surprise to researchers, who said rental costs nationally vary “from cities where that [$1,500 rental] budget can mean a spacious four-bedroom layout, to others where less than 250 square feet has to serve as your entire apartment.”
Wichita leads the affordability ranking. A $1,500 monthly rent equates to 1,329 square feet of space, and the average monthly rent there is just $902.
Also offering some of the best bang for the rental buck are communities in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma and Indiana.
On the flip side is Manhattan, where $1,500 would only cover 216 square feet, the smallest in the survey and reflective of the average monthly rent of $5,171 there.
Neighboring Brooklyn is the second most unaffordable locale in the survey, as $1,500 only equates to 297 square feet.
Boston (311 square feet), San Francisco (325) and Jersey City (331) round out the priciest areas.
The study looked at Yardi Matrix data from March for communities with total populations of 225,000 or more.
According to RentCafe, renters typically spend between 20% and 40% of household income on rent.
