For a big city, Atlanta isn’t a bad place to be a renter.
Might not have been that way always, but it's that way now, according to calculations by WalletHub.
Using a series of metrics, Atlanta ranks 21st among 150 cities as a place to rent, according to the list-happy folks at WalletHub, who seem to wake up and start ranking things before they even make coffee.
Among the large-ish cities ranked higher than Atlanta: Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando and Cincinnati. Among southern cities that ranked higher: Tampa, Winston-Salem and Raleigh. (But Atlanta is just ahead of Richmond.)
WalletHub, a Washington, D.C.-based company that offers credit information and financial consulting, judged cities based on “rental attractiveness” and “quality of life.” They broke those categories into a series of “15 key metrics.”
For instance, they looked at comparisons between renting and ownership costs, rents and income – that sort of thing.
When it came to the ol’ quality of life question, they also tossed in things like weather, school quality and the friendliness of drivers (uh-oh – should we have been lower?).
In any event, Scottsdale, Az. ranked first, followed by Overland Park, Kansas.
Among those in the bottom ten: Baltimore, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York and Oakland.
Overall, the attractiveness of renting has been on the upswing for reasons both demographic and economic. In fact, the rate of home ownership has fallen to its lowest level since 1965, the Census Bureau recently reported.
"Homeownership was once a big part of the American Dream," says the WalletHub report. "At least it was until the Great Recession dragged property values to their depths by 2012."
For many people, burned by collapsing home prices in the crash, see renting as safer than owning. Meanwhile, there are those millennials and their supposed cultural shift toward urban living and apartments (that is, when they are not living in their parents’ basement).
"But that doesn't mean renting is any cheaper than owning a home," WalletHub reminds us.
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