How much apartment can you get for $1,500 in New Jersey?

Recent reports indicate that rents are skyrocketing across the country and in New Jersey, so someone decided to compare various cities in the U.S. for rent affordability.

The three New Jersey towns included in the survey are the state’s three largest cities: Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson.

Spoiler alert: Manhattan gets you the least amount of space for $1,500 a month in the country.

Unfortunately for New Jersey renters, Jersey City isn’t far behind. According to Rent Café, $1500 in Jersey City gets you a whopping 362 feet on average. The typical apartment clocks in at 828 square feet for $3,434.

Paterson is better; $1500 gets you 693 square feet, and Newark is even better with 774 square feet available for $1500. That’s the best in the NY metro area.

To put things into perspective, at the national level, a monthly rent of $1,500 will get you an average of 782 square feet of apartment space, just enough for a one- or two-bedroom apartment.

The rest of the metro area: Yonkers: 539 sq. feet, Queens: 393, Brooklyn: 342, and Manhattan: 243.

If you want to be jealous, compare what we in New Jersey pay to the cheapest city (in the top 200 largest U.S. metros) is Wichita, Kansas, where $1,500 will stretch to as much as 1,463 square feet.

Here, renters with this monthly budget get to enjoy as much space as a three-bedroom, maybe even a four-bedroom rental. What's more, Wichita also ranked as one of the cities with the lowest cost of living in the US, while also being a competitive rental market.

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

You can now listen to Deminski & Doyle — On Demand! Hear New Jersey’s favorite afternoon radio show any day of the week. Download the Deminski & Doyle show wherever you get podcasts, on our free app, or listen right now.

Click here to contact an editor about feedback or a correction for this story.