The Most Expensive City in America to Rent a Home

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 31, 9:37AM EDT

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The Most Expensive City in America to Rent a Home — © xeni4ka / iStock via Getty Images

The rise in home prices in the last year has truly been extraordinary. According to the carefully followed S&P Case-Shiller index, prices have risen by 20% nationwide on a monthly basis year over year. In some cities, which include Tampa and Phoenix, the number is over 30%.

Among the reasons for the increase has been low mortgage rates, which have disappeared in the last few months. In 2021, they dropped below 3% for a 30 year fixed rate loan.

People also became more mobile because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work from home opportunities have been available to millions of Americans who want to relocate.
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As prices for homes rose some people turned to renting. As demand for rentals rose, so did rents.

Rent.com recently published a study titled “Cities With the Highest Rent in the U.S.” The authors pointed out “The price of rent increased across the country between 2021 and 2022, but most of the cities with the highest rent are in western or southern states.”

But, the city with the highest rent was not in the south or west. Jersey City, which can be reached from New York City by bridge, tunnel, or ferry, is only minutes from the country’s largest city. The average rent in Jersey City was $5,500 this year. The number was up 66.25% from 2021.

The balance of the cities with monthly rents over $4,000 were almost exclusively in or around America’s largest metro areas. These include Boston, Palo Alto, Hoboken, and Redmond, WA.

One other thing these places have in common is that demand is not likely to fall soon. That means prices won’t either.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.