Score
Rent-to-Income
Lower annual rent as a share of median household income scores higher.
Higher values rank better for this score.
How It's Calculated
The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.
How the ranking is built
Rent-to-Income rewards places where typical rent consumes a smaller share of typical household income.
- 1
The annual rent-to-income ratio is converted to a 0-100 score where lower burden scores higher.
- 2
The normalization is population-weighted inverse percentile rank over the full observed housing dataset.
Technical details
Read from the current master score table for this criterion.
The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Rent-to-Income.
What This Score Means
Rent-to-Income rewards places where typical rent consumes a smaller share of typical household income.
Statistics Feeding This Score
- Median gross rentSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS monthly median gross rent, multiplied by 12 to estimate annual rent.
- Median household incomeSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS median household income, used as the denominator.
- Rent-to-income ratioSource: Derived from ACS inputs
Derived as annualized median gross rent divided by median household income.
Source Data
Known Limits
- ACS values are place-level estimates, not live listings or neighborhood-level prices.
- Scores compare places against the current scored dataset using percentile-rank normalization, so the full observed ordering matters without p5/p95 clipping.
- Affordability does not include taxes, insurance, utilities, commuting costs, or local wage differences beyond median household income.
Top 10 Locations
Ranked by Rent-to-Income.