According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the cheapest states in which to rent a house are Arkansas, followed by Kentucky, South Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa, Idaho, Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Montana. The most expensive house rentals are found in Hawaii, California, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Alaska, Washington, and Virginia. Although not a state, the District of Columbia is right up there with the big boys. If it were a state, it would be the second highest.
Prices vary greatly here, depending on what part of the state you are in. If you are on the road system but outside commuting distance to any major city, prices are pretty low, but so are services like ambulance, police and fire protection. The closer to a city or in the city (such as Anchorage), prices can be quite high since they don't really have any taxes other than property tax. In rural communities where you cannot drive, prices for everything is astronomical since it is so hard to get building materials and supplies. Also, touristy places are very expensive. I think Hawaii is worse, though. I think California also varies a lot by location.
I'm pretty sure that's true, to some extent, in every state. You can buy a house in Millinocket for less than the average cost of renting a house in Millinocket, for example. At the time that I moved from California in 1983, I was paying $1300 a month for a two-bedroom townhouse. In Texas, where I moved to, I rented a 3-bedroom house for $350 a month, but that wouldn't be the average price in Texas. Generally, where the housing costs are very high, average incomes are also high.
Don't it also depend on "what part" of a city a house is rented in. There are those here that couldn't afford the area we live in and yet it's not the most costliest area in this city.
Since this is the "average" housing costs in the state, these are all taken into account, I am sure. However, since cities will have more rental houses than rural areas, the costs for renting a house in the city will factor in more highly, and cities tend to have higher prices. Since this is true in every state, however, the order of highest to lowest would still be legitimate.
But states with very large cities are skewed by those metropolitan areas. Half of New Yorkers live in New York City; half of Minnesotans live in the Twin Cities. That does not hold true for Maine, or Montana where large cities don't exist. Perhaps using median price instead of the mean would be more representative.
When we first moved to California in 1944, a 3-bedroom FHA house for the 5 of us rented for $32 per month. Howl
Costs? When I left the Chicago area in 1972, our electric power delivered by Commonwealth Edison Corp. was pushing the high side of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Arriving in Las Vegas, we got our first bill, Nevada Power Co., 1.6 cents per kwh! The disparity floored me! Frank