When she was spinning columns for The New York Star, Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw managed to afford a rent-controlled brownstone on the Upper East Side and a closet full of Manolo Blahniks on a journalist’s salary.
For many city dwellers, her apartment was the epitome of making it. But for Dallas residents, the dream of an apartment all to yourself is ever more out of reach.
The Economist published its third “Carrie Bradshaw Index” that evaluates American cities using rental prices gathered by an online rental marketplace based on whether someone making the median income for the area could afford a studio apartment without spending more than a third of their earnings each month. In the most recent index, Dallas has shifted to the unaffordable side of the scale.
According to The Economist‘s index, to live comfortably on your own in a studio apartment in Dallas, you would need to make $54,400 annually. Even then, you would just be cutting it. The median wage in Dallas is only $49,740.
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$55,000 is a respectable salary, especially for young people just starting out in their careers. Even so, that might not be enough to afford the luxury of living on your own in Dallas.
Nearby Plano is similar to Dallas with an affordable wage of $52,800, whereas Fort Worth and Arlington come in slightly cheaper, with an affordable wage of around $50,000 and $39,000, respectively, to afford a studio apartment on your own.
In the last few years, Texas has seen technology companies and other businesses flocking to the region. As more people move to Dallas, they are likely to start out renting. However, there isn’t enough apartment stock, and that’s reflected in increasing rental prices.
According to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, about 53% of renters in the Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington region are cost burdened, meaning they pay between 30% and 50% of their income on rent, and 26% of renters pay more than half of their income on rent.
With a large portion of earnings going to rent, the dream of the Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle — a chic apartment, a decent salary and enough left over for a social life — is starting to look more like a fantasy from a TV show.
Instead, young professionals might find themselves living a little less glamorously than Carrie in Manhattan and instead looking for some roommates to split the rent. Maybe the reality of Dallas apartment life is more like Friends or New Girl.