Housing is likely your biggest monthly expense and, if you live in a city like San Francisco or New York City, it may eat up a good chunk, or even the majority, of your paycheck.

Cities with rental burdens such as Louisiana, New York, and California are placed with a high cost of living.

“Someone making $70,000 a year in other parts of the country would need to make $166,000 in Manhattan to enjoy the same purchasing power.”

As a general rule, you want to spend no more than 30 percent of your monthly gross income on housing. If you’re a renter, that 30 percent includes utilities, and if you’re an owner, it includes other home-ownership costs like mortgage interest, property taxes, and maintenance.

Why 30 percent? It’s a standard that the government has been using since 1981: Those who spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing have historically been said to be “cost-burdened.” Those who spend 50 percent or more are considered “severely cost-burdened.”

For example, if you earn $2,800 per month before taxes, you should spend about $840 per month on rent.

Despite the method for estimation, the rental reasonableness issue is obvious across examines. Wages are not expanding at a similar rate as lodging expenses, and leases keep on expanding.

Availability of rental units have changed differently in different price ranges in the 2005-2015 period

Available low-cost rental units have been decreased over the past years in the US. This puts more pressure on lower-income households.

In Boston, this pressure is more on the average income families.

In both US and Boston, the availability of high-end units has been increased.

The Outlook

The low rental units are increasingly concentrated in older buildings, which puts them at a greater risk of loss from the stock and their residents at greater risk of displacement. Indeed, the share of units renting for under $800 that are at least 50 years old increased from 35 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2017. About half of the households living in low-rent units built before 1970 are single persons, while another 26 percent are families with children. About a fifth are headed by an adult age 65 and over. Moreover, nearly half of these tenants spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent and utilities, despite living in the lowest-cost housing that the market has to offer.

The humble decrease in the number of tenant families over the most recent two years might convey some momentary alleviation from rising rents. Up to this point, however, any sure effect of the decay has been counterbalanced by the continuous expansion in higher-pay tenants, who drive a developing portion of market movement, and by low opportunity rates, which are keeping by and large conditions tight.

Going ahead, segment patterns should uphold solid rental requests. The leaseholder family development will add up to 4.2 million by 2028 if homeownership rates stay close to their present levels. Furthermore, regardless of whether the homeownership rate increases by 1.6 rate focus over the course of the decade, the top-of-the-line projection demonstrates that tenant family development will, in any case, add up to at minimum 2.1 million given anticipated expansions in the grown-up populace. On the stockpile side, notwithstanding, conditions at the lower end of the market will remain testing as a great many low-pay families go after a currently inadequate number of reasonable rental units.