Here’s the hourly wage you need to afford rent in NJ

Let’s assume buying a house is out of the question for you right now, so you need to rent. How much do you need to earn to afford to rent a two-bedroom house? That answer varies from location to location, of course, and you can assume that New Jersey is more expensive.

A National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) report examined how much you would need to earn per hour to afford a two-bedroom home in each state. They call this the Housing Wage.

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The "wage needed to afford rent" estimates a full-time worker's hourly wage to rent a two-bedroom home at the fair-market rate (FMR). They also assumed that the wage-earner would spend 30% of their income on rent, the “accepted standard of affordability.”

To get the "wage needed to afford rent" number for each state, the NLIHC multiplied the FMR by 12 to get the yearly cost and then calculated 30% of that amount.

No surprise, New Jersey is in the top ten for needing the highest wage to afford the rent for a two-bedroom house.

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New Jersey lands at #7 with the average rent for a two-bedroom house at $1,742 per month. (That seems awfully low to me, but I’ll take their word for it).

Within those guidelines, you need to earn $33.50 per hour to afford that home.

California tops the list; you need an hourly wage of $42.25 to rent a home there.

You can rent a two bedroom home in Arkansas while making $16.27 an hour; the average rent for that house is $846.

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Gallery Credit: Aubrey Jane McClaine

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Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

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Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle only.

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Categories: Deminski & Doyle, Talking About ..., Ultimate New Jersey