If you're a new graduate looking for a city where you can actually afford an apartment without bunking up three to a bedroom, look no further.
St. Louis is where you ought to move.
That's according to a new study from real estate site Trulia, which compared salary data for new graduates with the cost of rental housing. St. Louis' combination of relatively generous starting salaries, coupled with extremely affordable housing, earned it the study's No. 1 spot as the most affordable rental market for new grads in the U.S.
In fact, 18.6 percent of rental apartments in the St. Louis market were affordable to graduates with a full-time job, Trulia found.
That's true of less than one percent of rentals in such traditional youth magnets as Portland, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago.
In fact, St. Louis apartments were significantly more affordable than the runners up on the Trulia list, which include No. 2 Dallas (where 14.9 percent of apartments were deemed affordable on a first-year graduate's salary) and No. 2 Houston (where that was the case for just 10.4 percent of apartments).
Here's the top 5, per Trulia:
Just how expensive is the most unaffordable city on the list? In Portland, Oregon, new grads make an average of $18,560. To afford an apartment, they'd need to make $47,653, Trulia concludes.
So what's a new graduate to do? You could quadruple up with a half-dozen roommates. You could find a tiny studio far from the center of the city. Or maybe just come to St. Louis. Not only can you get a decent pad here for less than $700, but our hipsters are far less insufferable than the ones in Portland. We promise.
We welcome your tips and feedback. Email the author at [email protected].
