If you’re looking for a city to invest in real estate, finding the locations with the highest rental rates is a smart way to increase your ROI. At Apartment Guide, we’ve got a database of information about rental rates all over the country, so we crunched the numbers to find the 10 metros with the highest average rental rates.
|
Ranking |
City | Average Rental Rate |
Percentage Change* |
| 1 | San Francisco, CA | $3,128 | 2% |
| 2 | New York, NY | $3,051 | -3% |
| 3 | Boston, MA | $2,605 | 4% |
| 4 | Los Angeles, CA | $2,126 | 2% |
| 5 | San Diego, CA | $1,834 | 5% |
| 6 | Long Beach, CA | $1,766 | 1% |
| 7 | Washington, DC | $1,709 | 4% |
| 8 | Fort Lauderdale, FL | $1,614 | 5% |
| 9 | Seattle, WA | $1,598 | -0.2% |
| 10 | Miami, FL | $1,567 | 6% |
Data Source: Apartment Guide
*since May 2017
Some of the cities on our list weren’t exactly shocking. New York and San Francisco have been getting pricier for a number of years now. Given Seattle’s well-publicized “housing crisis,” we were surprised to see that average rental rates there are actually falling. We were also surprised to see that average rental rates in Fort Lauderdale were higher than in Seattle.
One conclusion from our results: If you want to make a good investment, follow the sun and the surf. Long Beach, San Diego, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami all offer residents a number of advantages. Warm weather, access to the coast, and unique cultural influences have made these cities some of the most expensive in the country. Florida in particular stands out as the state where rental rates are going up fastest of these 10 expensive metros.
It also helps if you have access to accurate and realistic Airbnb data. This will help you determine whether a location is worth investing in or not.
Investing in real estate can be extremely lucrative, especially if you’re smart about investing in areas where your property is likely to appreciate in value and the rents are high.
This article has been contributed by our friends at Apartment Guide.