If you’re on the apartment hunt, you’ve probably found yourself wondering whether spaces are getting smaller and prices are growing, you’re right.
For instance, last year the average apartment size was 887 square feet which is 54 square feet than a decade ago, which touted apartments that were commonly around 941 square feet. Most recently, the average size went from 917 to 887 between 2022 and 2023 — a marked drop of about 30 square feet.
Apartment insights platform Rent Cafe took a look at this concerning trend in a new report and compared evolving apartment sizes over time in the 100 largest U.S. cities, using data from Yardi Matrix.
According to their findings Tallahassee, FL offers renters the most bang for their buck with the average size of the city’s apartments coming in at 991 square feet. Seattle, on the other hand came in as the city with smallest apartments in the country and most expensive rents— with just 659 square feet in size on average in 2022.
Queens, NY also made the list with apartments measuring 681 square feet in 2022 to come in 46 square feet (or 7%) less than 10 years ago according to the report.
This is interesting since the average year-over-year increase in rent was 5.77% nationwide, with the biggest increase occurring from 2021 to 2022 at 14.07% according to Credit Karma. According to the outlet, the average rent of a one-bedroom apartment increased from $941 in January 2021 to $1,169 in June of 2022, and the average rent of a two-bedroom apartment rose from $1,078 to $1,339.
Rent Cafe’s full report can be found here.