The rent check hurts in Southern California.
The typical renter in Los Angeles and Orange counties started 2017 paying the nation’s biggest slice of their household income to the landlord, while Inland Empire tenants had the 17th highest rent burden.
That’s according to online property tracker Zillow’s measurement of rent affordability. These analysts compare local rents with typical wages. I tossed their data into my trusty spreadsheet to find how financially challenging it is to live in Southern California.
By Zillow’s math, L.A.-O.C. rental expenses ate up 48.7 percent of a household’s budget in the first quarter. That’s up from 47.8 percent at 2016’s start. In the Riverside and San Bernardino counties, 36.1 percent of income was spent on rent in the first quarter, flat in a year.
Nationally, rents equaled 29.1 percent of income at the start of 2017 vs. 29.6 percent a year ago.
Renting locally has long been expensive compared to elsewhere in the nation, but it wasn’t always among the priciest.
From 1985 to 1999, L.A.-O.C.’s rent slice of income averaged 36.2 percent, only 23rd highest among 317 U.S. markets tracked. Inland Empire renters paid 32.7 percent of their income to landlords, 52nd highest.
But since the Great Recession ended in 2010, the rent burden has risen dramatically in Southern California as an economic revival created a wave of jobs but not enough apartment construction. New renters chased too few vacant units, which pushed up rents. As a result, L.A.-O.C. tenants had the nation’s largest average rent burden since 2010; the Inland Empire ranked 16th.