The Cheapest Cities per Square Foot for Renters

Everyone needs a place to live, from Ada, OK, to Zanesville, OH. If you're renting in New York City, you're expecting a big price tag for a small space. If you're looking for a rental in, say, Minot, ND, you might grab a spacious floorplan for a low, low price.

But rental prices can be difficult to assess. What's a good price? One city's high rent is another's reasonable scale. So, a great way to measure rental price differences city by city is to nail down one variable across the board. If you look at lease prices across the country by square foot, you get a better, more even sense of where units are a good value and where they're above average.

Ranking cities by apartment square foot

So, where are the cheapest cities per square foot to rent an apartment? It's a mix of small towns and suburbs, mid-sized Midwest cities and Southern enclaves. Where you won't find them is along the Northeast Corridor, in California or anywhere along the coasts.

We searched every multifamily listing on Apartment Guide to find apartments in every city in America in which we have available inventory. We then calculated the average size of all those apartments in each city and divided that figure by that city's average rental rate to determine the price per square foot.

Then, we ranked the 50 least expensive cities in the nation to rent an apartment based on average rental price per square foot for studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units.

• Cities with the best deals for studio apartments
• Cities with the best deals for one-bedroom apartments
• Cities with the best deals for two-bedroom apartments

Studio apartments

Sitting on your bed, one hand stirring the soup on the stove and the other grabbing something in the bathroom. This is the cliché image of the studio apartment, but it's not always the case.

Sure, there are plenty of tiny studio apartments across the land, even micro-apartments, but technically any apartment with a single combined living/dining/bedroom space and a bathroom and kitchenette is a studio apartment.

In places like New York, studio apartments can be gigantic open-concept palaces spanning thousands of square feet. But most are somewhere in between.

In the U.S., our data shows the average studio apartment is 530 square feet, and rents for a national average of $1,065. Only about half of the apartments on our top 50 are smaller than that and just about half rent for less money.

• Not every college city is flush with multi-bedroom rentals for students fitting five or six to a house. College Station, the home of Texas A&M University, has studio apartments ready for solo students and recent grads looking for a cheap start. The aptly named university and railroad town is the cheapest city in America for studio apartments by size at $1.20 per square foot — a full dime cheaper than any other town.
• The tiny burg of Ferrelview, MO, is a small town that proves it's always about location, location, location. The suburb is just down the street from Kansas City International Airport — a perfect spot for a slew of overnight one-bedrooms tailored to flight crews and traveling businesspeople. With just under 800 residents, the community features a whopping 91 studio rental units. Town-wide, the average size of a studio is just 342 square feet, the smallest average studios in the country, but much of that is thanks to the 180 and 250 square foot efficiencies at the Unicorn Apartments. Rents average just $1.30 per square foot, the second-lowest on the entire list.
• It's probably not much of a surprise to find Las Vegas among the top 50 cheapest studio apartment cities at number 29. And here, the reason is volume. Between gambling regulars traveling to town and wanting a quieter sleep away from the Strip, a gaggle of casino and resort workers and staff and a large UNLV student population, the need for affordable zero-bedroom setups is high. And with that demand comes a plethora of available units, with an eye-popping 259 studio apartments within the city limits, by far the most on our list and a full 85 more than second place. But don't expect a ton of space. Units average just 421 square feet.
• Value isn't always found among just the cheapest apartments. While a tiny space can lead to a tiny rent, when a little more space is needed, shelling out a bit more cash can give you a lot more room to spread out. At just under 30,000 citizens, Sun Prairie, WI, is the capital of Madison's largest suburb and the fifth cheapest rent per area on our list at just $1.71 per square foot. But the key feature of studios in Sun Prairie is space. What creates such value is an average of 583 square feet per studio unit, the ninth-largest among the top 50 side by side with the 12th lowest average total rent.
• The 10th cheapest on this list may be number one on a list of fun names. Pflugerville, TX – the “P" is silent – was named for its first settler, German immigrant Henry Pfluger, Sr., and his family. Pfluger means “ploughman" in German, making the city Ploughmanville. Today, the large suburb of Austin is a bustling city of 65,000 but that wasn't always the case. As late as 1980, the city, if you can believe, contained just 745 residents. That's a population increase of more than 8,600 percent in just less than 40 years. All those new people needed places to live, and despite demand, studio apartments stayed affordable at just $1.81 per square foot.

A plethora of cities across the country make the top 50 cheapest per square foot for studio apartments, throughout Texas, the South and the plains Midwest.

One-bedroom apartments

A bed in your living room isn't for everyone. While studio apartments are certainly an affordable option, most people haven't had the fortune of trying one on for size. A one-bedroom apartment is the much more common, more affordable option for those without a need for an exorbitant amount of space.

One-bedroom units are the perfect affordable option for single young professionals, pre-child couples and folks that work hard, play hard and don't need much more than a place to lay their head and make a sandwich.

Of course, while the average one-bedroom unit runs about 760 square feet, a single bedroom doesn't always mean cold, faceless high-rise tower square slabs. Your dream one-bedroom could feature a huge open space living and dining area with a loft bedroom or a chic artsy space with exposed beams and large windows with a cozy bedroom retreat off the den.

But most of the towns towards the top of this 50 cheapest one-bedroom rental list feature a variety of layouts somewhere in between, mostly in smaller cities and commuter suburbs.

• Southeast of the Cleveland Metro area is Mahoning Valley, also known as “Steel Valley," the buckle in the Rust Belt. And just about halfway between Youngstown and Warren, the Valley's two largest cities, is Niles, OH. Niles has had a difficult history, having survived violent race riots in the 1930s, the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and a deadly tornado in the 1980s. But the city, known as the birthplace of President William McKinley, has bounced back through diversification. A population decline since the 1980s has minimized housing demand, resulting in some really great rental prices for a new, younger population. Not only does Niles have the cheapest per square foot one-bedroom rental prices in the nation at $0.87, but it also has the overall cheapest average rents at just $560 a month.
• Just because you're paying a small rent doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a small apartment. Sometimes, you can find the right value in the right place to get a whole lot of bang for your buck. Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee is one of those places. Columbus, just a hundred miles southwest of Atlanta, is the third-largest city in Georgia and the nation's second-largest Columbus. Home to the 1996 Olympic softball competition, Columbus offers an affordable anomaly. While the city features the fourth most affordable one-bedroom apartments in the nation at just $0.97 per square foot, you get a comparatively big space at 882 square feet on average, the fourth largest in the top 50. While the overall average rent of $845 is high, the large spaces certainly make the price more palatable.
• Anyone who has shopped at a big box store knows why the small city of Bentonville is world-famous. The northwestern Arkansas town is the birthplace of the world's largest retail chain Walmart and CEO and heir Jim Walton, the world's 14th richest human. The rise of Walmart mirrored a population rise in Bentonville, which saw a nearly 500 percent increase since 1980. This isn't only due to Walmart's growth, but the countless Walmart vendors and satellite office employees from nearly every industry that have converged on Bentonville to be close to Walmart HQ. Perhaps that's a primary factor in the abnormality where the city has one of the highest one-bedroom rents per square foot in the top 50 at $1.33, and also offers some of the slightest average floorplans at 616 square feet, the third smallest in the nation.
• But the city that holds the distinction of having the smallest average one-bedroom unit square footage in the top 50 is the aforementioned Ferrelview, MO. The Kansas City International Airport-adjacent city is a haven for flight crews sharing spaces during layovers and businessfolk regularly in town for a night, which leads to the town having not only a glut of studio apartments but one-bedroom spaces, as well, with a numerous 54 units for just 800 residents. Each averages a minuscule 588 square feet but also comes in with the lowest overall rent of the top 50 at a diminutive $571 a month, a hundred and fifty dollars less than No. 2 smallest Texarkana, AR.
• So, where would you find the largest one-bedroom apartments in the top 50? Not in a place you might think. Lancaster, NY is a small suburb of about 10,000 just east of Buffalo along U.S. 20. Units here are a sizable 981 square feet on average, nearly a hundred feet bigger than Cumming, GA, the second largest. But all that space comes at a price, with the highest overall one-bedroom rent on the list at $1,219 a month.

The cheapest one-bedroom apartments for a variety of needs stretch across the country. Good values can be found anywhere between the coasts, especially in pockets of North Carolina, Georgia and upper Midwest giants like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Minnesota.

Two-bedroom apartments

While the need for more housing for a large number of millennials moving away from home has led to increases in new construction of both studio and one-bedroom apartments, there are still more two-bedroom units in America than any other style. Couples with children, roommates dividing space (and rent) and single-renters in need of more room or a space for an office, music or workout room are all in the market for two-bedroom apartments.

But more space means higher cost, which can be offset by dividing the price of rent among roommates or family members. And an individual's needs dictate what type of apartment set up is necessary for their purposes, which two-bedroom rentals afford, with a variety of styles and layouts from garden apartments to duplexes to shotgun walk-ups.

• So, where are the cheapest two-bedroom apartments in the entire U.S.? An hour from Evansville, IN, two hours from Cape Girardeau, MO, and about halfway between St. Louis and Louisville is the tiny city of Morganfield, KY. It's here that you'll find two-bedroom rentals for just $0.44 per square foot — a full quarter less than the second cheapest, Fort Smith, AR. And actual rents in this town of 10,000 are a minuscule $375 a month for an average two-bedroom, about half that of Benton, AR, the second cheapest. But these insanely affordable units are also quite small. At just 850 square feet on average, they're also the tiniest among the top 50.
• Morganfield doesn't stand alone as the smallest average units among the top 50 cheapest, as Euclid, OH, comes in at the same exact average size. But the similarities stop there. Euclid, Cleveland's fifth-largest suburb, is five times the size of Morganfield. Just off Cleveland's northeast corner, Euclid is also much more expensive. Even at the same size, apartments in Euclid rent for more than twice the price, making it more than double the cost per square foot, at $0.92, good for 25th on the top 50.
• It shouldn't be surprising that two-bedroom apartments are in demand in college towns, both for students looking to move off-campus and for recent grads staying in town. In fact, three large university towns land in the top 10 cheapest cities for two-bedroom apartments. Stillwater, OK — home to Oklahoma State University, Bloomington, IL — adjacent to the Illinois State University campus and Auburn, AL — home to the football powerhouse, all offer two-bedroom rents for less than 80 cents per square foot.
• But it's not just the price that makes two bedrooms perfect for college towns, it's also availability. The bucolic college town of Lawrence, KS, home to the University of Kansas, comes in at the 21st cheapest city for two-bedroom units at $0.90 for each of its average 911 square feet. But what stands out in the land of Jayhawks is its whopping 101 available units for all those students and basketball fans to choose from in one of the most affordable college towns in America.
• What is the threshold to make it into the top 50 most affordable two bedrooms in America? When the math is all done, the 50 cheapest two'fers all come in under a buck per square foot. And seven cities rent for exactly that — Hoover, AL; Brandon, MS; Jefferson Hills, PA; Starkville, MS; Waco, TX; Florence, KY and Coralville, IA. The ratio diversifies among both big and cheap. Hoover, a Birmingham suburb, offers a full 1,225 square feet on average for $1,220 a month, and Coralville, just outside Iowa City, has 889-square-foot, two-bedroom units renting for an average of $893 monthly.

Oklahoma is OK for two-bedroom rentals with five cities in the top 50 cheapest, but it isn't as IN as Indiana which has seven. Here's the full top 50 for dual bedroom units.

Methodology

The rent information included in this article is based on October 2019 rental property inventory on Apartment Guide and is used for illustrative purposes only. Cities were excluded if they did not have at least 20 units in our available inventory. The data contained herein do not constitute financial advice or a pricing guarantee for any apartment.