AUSTIN, Texas —
A new study shows that more Austinites are paying rents so high they take up more than 30% of their income.
According to ApartmentList.com, more Austinites are considered "cost-burdened," meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent or a mortgage.
The study says out of more than 190,000 Austin metro households, 49% are cost-burdened. That's up from 47% back in 2019.
The study compares rent and mortgage prices against data from the Census Bureau. It showed that between 2019 and 2022, the median rent in Austin increased by 20%, while the median income also increased by about 20%.
"Once you have to dedicate so much of your income to rent, you start cutting back on other things that I think a lot of people would consider to be important," said Rob Warnock, a senior research associate for Apartment List.
In addition to the increase in Austinites considered cost-burdened, the number of "severely" cost-burdened renters is also going up. More than 20% of people are paying more than 50% of their income on rent.
"That is concerning both from the perspective of, you know, the obvious perspective that that's a lot of somebody's income to have to dedicate towards just putting a roof over their heads. That's also the group of renters that has been growing the fastest," Warnock said. "We are seeing the effects of housing unaffordability, but we're also seeing it kind of concentrated on this higher end of of folks who are severely cost-burdened, which is, again, just an even more sort of alarming situation for folks to be in."
However, Austin is doing better than the national average when it comes to those who are cost-burdened. The Apartment List study says the national average is about 51%.
Warnock said the housing market has changed since 2022, and some rent prices have started to go down. Once Apartment List gets newer data from the Census, its researchers can update the study and it might look more promising.
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