Buzz
Sharing a living space with a roommate can significantly cut down your expenses, but how much you’ll save depends on your location. SmartAsset analyzed the 50 largest cities in the U.S. to determine how much you can save by having a roommate in each area.
To gather their findings, they examined rental prices from myapartmentmap.com, using the average fair market rent for one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in the cities they studied. They noted:
In order to conduct our research, we assumed two roommates would share a two-bedroom apartment and split the rent evenly. We then calculated the difference between the average rent paid by one of these roommates and the rent for someone living alone in a one-bedroom apartment.
For more details on their methodology, you can visit the full article, but overall, they discovered that people living on the West Coast have the most to gain from having a roommate, while those in the Southwest experience only modest savings.
The findings probably aren’t shocking—you’ll naturally save the most in places with the highest rent prices. However, it’s still insightful to see exactly how much you can save. Here are the savings for the top ten cities with the greatest discounts:
San Francisco, CA: $1,106
New York, NY: $1,030
San Jose, CA: $841
Boston, MA: $810
Oakland, CA: $733
Washington, DC: $590
San Diego, CA: $564
Los Angeles, CA: $558
Long Beach, CA: $554
Portland, OR: $546
If you’re considering relocating to one of these cities or curious about how much a roommate could save you, the data is definitely worth a look. You can find the full information through the link below.
Photo by Lauren Shiplett.
