'Bout the Benjamins: the most expensive cities to live post graduation

Jazmyn Reed
Staff Writer
St. Louis is the cheapest place to head after graduation.

Everyone has a post-college dream job at a dream city, but are recent graduates actually aware of the cost of rent in cities across the country? Trulia.com, a real estate website, set out to find exactly how affordable rental markets are across the United States.

The study, called "Pads for Grads," found that out of the 25 largest rental markets in the country, less than 19 percent are actually affordable for recent college graduates.

"It's definitely something to think about," recent FSU graduate Kalan Capers and prospective Washington, DC resident said. She intends to move to the Washington, DC area, later this summer.

"With student loans and an entry-level salary, you want to make sure that you can afford to live somewhere. It's different than Tallahassee, where there's all these choices around campus catered towards students wants, needs, and their budgets."

The Trulia study determined affordability based on each metro area's medium income for recent grads by using the asking prices for rentals on their website. They calculated the total monthly payment, including rent and insurance, and if those expenses added up to less than 31 percent of that income, it was considered affordable.

The max amount of rent a recent grad could afford based on the formula would be 666 dollars monthly. That number would also require at least one roommate. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix all follow St. Louis–whose expenses added up to just 18 percent of a typical grad's income–as the most affordable cities to rent in, making the Midwest and the South the most affordable areas to move to following college.

The most expensive market was in Portland, Oregon, where less than 0.1 percent of rental units are affordable for recent grads. There, the maximum, affordable monthly rental payment would be 479 dollars and would require at least two roommates to find a unit at that price. The next most expensive areas to live in following Portland are Riverside-San Bernardino, CA, Orange County, CA, Miami, FL and San Diego, CA.

"I'm honestly shocked New York is not in the top five but Miami is. Honestly, though, I think this study should also look at how many jobs are in the area. You can't put a price on opportunity, " Capers said.

Truila also compared the median income of graduates in metro areas versus how much they would need to make in order to afford the median rent. The most expensive city for rent is San Francisco, with a median rent in May 2015 of 3,500 dollars. Recent grads would need to make 137, 272 dollars a year to afford this. Unfortunately most college students leave school to start working at entry-level positions, with entry-level pay. The median income for recent grads in San Francisco, for example, is just 41, 244 dollars. The cities with next highest median monthly rents are New York (3,100 dollars), Boston (2, 500 dollars), Miami (2,200 dollars) and Los Angeles (2,185 dollars).

"I think that stuff like this has a way of working itself out. It may be cheaper to stay and live Tallahassee, but, ultimately, there's more to do and see in other places. And that has its own value," Capers said.

All statics and data were provided by Trulia trends, which website describes it as, "investigators of unconventional house hunting trends, finders of hidden fun facts and believers in the beautiful." Detailed results of the study can be found on the Trulia website.