Oldham County, Kentucky, Tops List Of Most Affordable Counties For Renters To Live -- Study

A study by AdvisorSmith indicated Friday the most affordable places for renters are in the Midwest while the least affordable are in coastal and metropolitan areas.

“Nine of the top 10 most affordable counties were in midwestern states, with four of them being in Ohio,” Adrian Mak told International Business Times.

The top 10 most affordable counties are:

1. Oldham County, Kentucky
2. Hamilton County, Indiana
3. Cole County, Missouri
4. Warren County, Ohio
5. Geauga County, Ohio
6. Waukesha County, Wisconsin
7. Delaware County, Ohio
8. Dallas County, Iowa
9. Greene County, Ohio
10. Ozaukee County, Wisconsin

The top 10 most expensive counties are:

1. Bronx County, New York
2. Miami-Dade County, Florida
3. Kings County, New York
4. Monterey County, California
5. Suffolk County, Massachusetts
6. Osceola County, Florida
7. Los Angeles County, California
8. Queens County, New York
9. Essex County, Massachusetts
10. Santa Cruz County, California

AdvisorSmith ranked 827 counties across the U.S. into not only most and least affordable overall but also by small, medium, and large populations, and weighted the lists by median income.

“Among the counties, the rent-to-income ratio ranged from as low as 10.9% of household income in Oldham County up to as high as 64.5% of income in the Bronx,” Mak said. “The most affordable midsize and large counties tended to be affluent suburbs of large cities in Midwestern states and Pennsylvania. Many of the least affordable small and midsize counties were areas in California, New York City, South Florida, Boston and Hawaii.”

The study comes on the 10 year anniversary of the Great Recession when the housing bubble popped. As a result, more people began renting instead of tying themselves to homes and potentially unstable mortgages. This is reflected in the percentage of renters across the U.S., rising from 33.4% in 2008 to 36.9% in 2016, Tableau Public reported.

AdvisorSmith formulated its lists using data provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. Research 50th Percentile Rent Estimates provided median rent estimates for studio and multibedroom units across the country.