To rent the typical US apartment without exceeding the federal 30% cost-burdened threshold, you need to earn $77,800 per year. That is the gross-income figure for the median asking rent of $1,945 per month, computed across 21,844 live apartment listings refreshed every morning. By bedroom: $67,760 for a studio, $75,120 for a 1-bedroom, $95,800 for a 2-bedroom, $82,720 for a 3-bedroom.
The benchmark below the calculations is the federal 30% rule. The US median household income is $75,149 (Census ACS, most recent vintage). At today's median asking rent, the typical household hits a 31.1% rent burden. The number above 30 is the modern affordability gap stated arithmetically.
The headline number, by bedroom
Income required to keep monthly rent at or below 30% of gross. Each row is the inverse of (rent x 12) / 0.30.
| Bedroom size | Median rent | Annual income (30% rule) | Hourly wage (40hr / 50wk) | Take-home / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,694 | $67,760 | $33.88/hr | $4,235 |
| 1 bedroom | $1,878 | $75,120 | $37.56/hr | $4,695 |
| 2 bedroom | $2,395 | $95,800 | $47.9/hr | $5,988 |
| 3 bedroom | $2,068 | $82,720 | $41.36/hr | $5,170 |
The hourly column assumes a 40-hour week and a 50-week year (two weeks unpaid time off). The take-home column assumes 25% effective tax across federal, state, FICA, and standard deductions; your actual take-home varies materially by state. The 1-bedroom-to-2-bedroom step is the largest income jump on the bedroom ladder, roughly $20,680 additional gross income per year.
Salary needed by city
Income required to clear the 30% rule on the typical apartment in each city we cover at sufficient depth (3+ tracked properties). Sorted from cheapest to most expensive. Each city links to its live listings page.
| City | Avg rent | Annual income (30% rule) | At 25% rule | Properties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garland, TX | $964 | $38,560 | $46,272 | 4 |
| Arlington, TX | $974 | $38,960 | $46,752 | 5 |
| Osceola, IA | $1,104 | $44,160 | $52,992 | 3 |
| Corpus Christi, TX | $1,128 | $45,120 | $54,144 | 7 |
| Boone, IA | $1,159 | $46,360 | $55,632 | 4 |
| Laredo, TX | $1,202 | $48,080 | $57,696 | 9 |
| Lubbock, TX | $1,246 | $49,840 | $59,808 | 4 |
| Tucson, AZ | $1,261 | $50,440 | $60,528 | 5 |
| Bakersfield, CA | $1,269 | $50,760 | $60,912 | 3 |
| Tulsa, OK | $1,273 | $50,920 | $61,104 | 5 |
| Arlington, VA | $3,165 | $126,600 | $151,920 | 11 |
| San Diego, CA | $3,194 | $127,760 | $153,312 | 7 |
| Miami, FL | $3,204 | $128,160 | $153,792 | 17 |
| Oakland, CA | $3,419 | $136,760 | $164,112 | 8 |
| San Francisco, CA | $3,451 | $138,040 | $165,648 | 5 |
| Fremont, CA | $3,643 | $145,720 | $174,864 | 8 |
| Honolulu, HI | $4,149 | $165,960 | $199,152 | 6 |
| Boston, MA | $4,426 | $177,040 | $212,448 | 9 |
| Brooklyn, NY | $4,486 | $179,440 | $215,328 | 4 |
| Washington, DC | $4,649 | $185,960 | $223,152 | 3 |
The cheapest tracked cities require under $39k annually to clear the 30% rule. The most expensive require over $186k. That is the same job market with the same federal rule producing income requirements that differ by more than 5x. Geography is the single biggest variable in rent affordability, larger than bedroom count.
The 30% rule, the 25% rule, and what changed
The 30% threshold dates to the 1981 Section 8 amendments. Adjusting the same calculation to a 25% target (a common modern personal-finance recommendation) raises the required income across every row of the bedroom and city tables above. For the median US apartment, the 25% rule lifts the income required from $77,800 to $93,360. That delta of roughly $15,560 per year is the modern "savings buffer" the 25% rule is trying to preserve.
Why people argue for 25%: in 1981 the median household spent roughly 7% of income on healthcare. In 2026 that share is closer to 14%. Childcare, student loan, transportation, and insurance burdens have all moved against renters in the same window. Holding rent at 30% in 2026 leaves materially less room for everything else than holding rent at 30% did in 1981. The arithmetic of that argument is the gap between the two columns above.
The reality check: where median income falls below the salary needed
The salary tables above answer "what you need to earn". The next question is "what does the typical local resident actually earn". For the cities where we have Census median household income joined to our rent data, the gap between salary required and salary observed is the rent-burden problem stated for that specific market.
Rent-to-income reality check
Annual rent divided by Census median household income for the same city. The federal cost-burdened threshold is 30%. Shaded rows are over.
| City | Avg rent | Annual rent | Median income | Burden |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami, FL | $3,204 | $38,448 | $59,390 | 64.7% |
| Tampa, FL | $2,823 | $33,876 | $71,302 | 47.5% |
| Houston, TX | $2,282 | $27,384 | $62,894 | 43.5% |
| Los Angeles, CA | $2,871 | $34,452 | $80,366 | 42.9% |
| San Antonio, TX | $2,131 | $25,572 | $62,917 | 40.6% |
| Dallas, TX | $2,184 | $26,208 | $67,760 | 38.7% |
| Charlotte, NC | $2,391 | $28,692 | $78,438 | 36.6% |
| Nashville, TN | $2,278 | $27,336 | $75,197 | 36.4% |
| Orlando, FL | $2,049 | $24,588 | $69,268 | 35.5% |
| Atlanta, GA | $2,269 | $27,228 | $81,938 | 33.2% |
| Minneapolis, MN | $2,170 | $26,040 | $80,269 | 32.4% |
| Las Vegas, NV | $1,901 | $22,812 | $70,723 | 32.3% |
| Phoenix, AZ | $1,973 | $23,676 | $77,041 | 30.7% |
| Denver, CO | $2,251 | $27,012 | $91,681 | 29.5% |
| Seattle, WA | $2,923 | $35,076 | $121,984 | 28.8% |
| Henderson, NV | $1,936 | $23,232 | $88,654 | 26.2% |
| Austin, TX | $1,913 | $22,956 | $91,461 | 25.1% |
| Cary, NC | $1,974 | $23,688 | $129,399 | 18.3% |
| Morrisville, NC | $1,720 | $20,640 | $125,404 | 16.5% |
| Arlington, TX | $974 | $11,688 | $73,519 | 15.9% |
Cities shaded rose are markets where the median household cannot rent the typical apartment without exceeding the 30% cost-burdened threshold. Coverage of this table grows as we backfill Census income joins; cities not yet on the table do not have public median-household-income data linked. See the coverage map for the broader per-city tier breakdown.
Salary by quartile, not just median
Median rent is one number. Most renters compare against the cheaper quartile (P25), where they hope to land, and the upper quartile (P75), where they fear they may have to. The income required at each:
| Rent percentile | Asking rent | Income (30% rule) | Income (25% rule) |
|---|---|---|---|
| P25 (cheaper end) | $1,516 | $60,640 | $72,768 |
| P50 (median) | $1,945 | $77,800 | $93,360 |
| P75 (premium end) | $2,573 | $102,920 | $123,504 |
The income required to clear the 30% rule at P25 is $60,640. At P75 it is $102,920. The gap ($42,280) is the same labor market hitting two very different lifestyles. A renter at P25 lives in the cheaper half of the market with cushion; a renter at P75 with the same income strategy needs roughly twice the salary.
How we compute this, and why our numbers differ from Zillow and RentCafe
How we calculate this, and why it differs from Zillow and RentCafe
Every number on this page comes from a live asking price we collected from an apartment community's own leasing website, the same page a prospective tenant would see. We do not apply a statistical model. We do not survey landlords. We publish what is on the market right now, refreshed every morning.
Today that means 21,844 individual units across 1,746 properties in 163 cities, including studios to 4+ bedrooms.
Zillow's ZORI is a model, not a listing
The Zillow Observed Rent Index estimates the typical rent for the middle of the market in a given region, using a statistical model that weights repeat rentals across Zillow's listing database. It is useful for long-horizon macro comparisons. It is not a count of actual listed units. A ZORI figure reflects Zillow's estimate of the market, not the raw asking prices available to rent today.
RentCafe's public chart smooths the movement away
RentCafe publishes a national average apartment rent drawn from Yardi's property-management database. The published chart reads as a near-flat line from mid 2023 through early 2026, which is an artifact of how averages and index smoothing erase the monthly signal. Raw month-to-month medians across live listings do not sit flat for two and a half years. If you ran a landlord portfolio, you would never price at the index.
What you get here instead
- The raw distribution: 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile asking rents. Indices collapse this to one number.
- Bedroom-by-bedroom quartiles so you can see what a studio actually rents for versus a 2 bedroom.
- Live city rankings, not metro-level aggregates that hide intra-market variance.
- Unsmoothed month-to-month medians, including the outlier months indices normally average out.
- A refresh timestamp on every chart, so you always know how stale what you are reading is.
Zillow, ZORI, and RentCafe are trademarks of their respective owners. This comparison is offered as methodology context. Ratings refer to public methodology documentation as of April 2026.
Where this data is dense enough to publish on
The bedroom-level salary requirements rest on the full national dataset and are statistically sound. Per-city salary requirements are gated to cities with at least 3 tracked properties; this is enough for an honest "cheapest to most expensive" ranking but not for neighborhood-level cuts. For deeper city analysis, see the coverage map, which classifies every city in the dataset as deep, moderate, or thin coverage.
Explore further
- What is the median rent in the US?: same dataset, the headline rent figure with full distribution and 12-month trend.
- Rent by bedroom count: studio, 1, 2, and 3-bedroom medians with the per-room cost breakdown.
- How much does an apartment cost in America?: same data, framed as a budget-first guide.
- Live search: filter the dataset by city, price band, or bedroom count with current asking prices.