Community: First Apartment

~ Laura

How much rent did you pay for your first apartment? Mine was a four bedroom apartment on Telegraph Street in Binghamton, NY, which I shared with 3 college friends. 2 of the 3 roommates are still friends on Facebook. I think the rent was $300 per month.

Published by Laura

18 thoughts on “Community: First Apartment”

  1. I believe my first apartment (1 bedroom furnished 5th floor walkup–VERY COLD IN WINTER) in the Russian Far East cost $50 a month in 1995. I wasn’t paying that–I was a Peace Corps Volunteer and it was a condition that my Russian school was supposed to provide the apartment.

    My first apartment that I paid for was probably $300 a month for a large furnished efficiency in a bad part of Pittsburgh in 1997.

    Our first apartment as newlyweds was a large 1-bedroom apt. with balcony for $560 a month in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh in 1998.

    Our next apartment (brand new 2 bed/2 bath/1-car garage) was $1560 in Rockville MD in 2001. It was great. We couldn’t really afford it.

    Skipping forward a bit, we rented a 3/2 2,000 sq. ft. house from Hometown U. in 2007 for $1,000 a month.

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    1. Possibly $250 a month for the 2nd apartment in the bad Pittsburgh neighborhood, but I’m not 100% sure.

      We had a neighborhood serial rapist when I lived there. I was pretty happy to leave.

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  2. My first apartment was a one-semester sublet I took when I got out of my dorm contract because the guys in the room next to mine wouldn’t stop playing “I Feel For You” at random times, day or night. I got sick of being woken up to “Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan.” I cannot remember how much I paid for that sublet but it was well worth however much I paid.

    But I think my share of rent in my next living situation, a 6 BR house on State St in Ithaca, was $175/month. 30-something years later, S lived in a house a half a block away from that house, and it was $675/month.

    Our 1BR basement apartment in Park Slope in the late 1990s was $750/month.

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  3. First apartment was actually a shared room in a boarding house, with the entire house sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. Can’t remember my rent, but well under $100/month.

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  4. Gosh, it’s a long time ago (1990). And prices in NZ aren’t exactly equivalent.
    But I *think* it was $300/month for a one bedroom open-plan flat – in a slightly dodgy area of a minor provincial city. I moved from there to a room in a shared villa (lovely kauri floors – but cold in winter) with 2 others – which was about $200/month.
    [Then I moved back home, saved like a demon, and bought my house 2 years later. Flatting wasn’t my ‘happy place’]

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  5. 1979: Under $250 for the first floor of a house converted to a duplex in a decent neighborhood in Minneapolis. The landlord was a soft-spoken Dane. Ugly orange carpet, tub no shower, and the folks upstairs clomped something fierce.

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  7. $400/month (or so, I can’t remember precisely, and I know I was paying using a grad stipend and that my parents co-signed) for a studio in Evanston, IL in 1987. I don’t remember much about the apartment, but I think it ws small. Similar studios seem to rent for $900 or so, which doesn’t seem too bad.

    Elder has had her first apartment already, a cute studio on a courtyard in Seattle that rented for about $1100/month (sublet).

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    1. Also in Evanston in 86-87, but as an undergrad, 250 or 300 for my share of a 4th floor walk up. I think it was 550 for a 2br and I had the larger room.

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  8. $600 a month for a “studio” (in quotes because it really was a one bedroom) in the most expensive neighborhood in Chicago. Not the smartest move, but I didn’t really know the city all that well. Moved out to a cheaper apartment a year later – three bedroom in an up and coming neighborhood for $800 total.

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  9. $575 for a one bedroom in Glendale (suburb of Los Angeles) that I shared with a college friend. It had a huge living room and a garage underneath.

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  10. 1991: $400/month + heat (which was a lot) for a 2-bedroom apartment in Sackville NB (college town – my roomate and I each paid half)
    1194: $650/mo for a good sized 2 bdrm in Toronto with a backyard, eastern end of town but not surburban. My parents still own that building and they could rent the same place for $3,000, possibly +, but they have good tenants and have kept it closer to $2,300.

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  11. Our last rental (2012-2013) was $1450 a month for the top half of a duplex (somehow 4/4 and 1700 sq. ft.) in a student slum. We had to move there for a year because our previous rental (the glorious $1,000 2,000 sq. ft. 3/2 house) was demolished by Hometown U., along with the rest of our neighborhood.

    We lived as a family of 5 (10-year-old, 7-year-old, and new baby) at the duplex.

    The property management people were very nice, but incredibly incompetent. We spent Thanksgiving-Christmas with a new baby and extremely intermittent heating. We also had remarkable numbers of big Texas roaches in that house no matter how much the landlord sprayed. We also had downstairs neighbors who used the tiny shared green space for their huge dog…and never, ever cleaned up, which produced unbearable odors in the Texas heat.

    We were all very, very happy to buy our first house. It’s not some sort of HGTV showplace, but it doesn’t stink and we hire reputable tradespeople as opposed to the various moonlighting randos that our last landlord liked to hire.

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  12. I don’t remember. I’ve been decluttering, which includes creating a huge “to be shredded” pile of old bank statements and checks

    Much less than today’s rent, at any rate.

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  13. We paid $150 month for a 2-bedroom apartment (2nd bedroom had no windows so it was like a cave) in a small college town in central Illinois . This was in 1979.

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  14. $575/month for a studio on Beacon Hill in Boston in about 1992; I was working at Mass General Hospital as an RA for only $20k, and my parents had to cosign the lease because MA wouldn’t allow people to sign a lease for a rent that was more than 30% (25%?) of their income. After that, about $350 for a studio in western NY when I was a grad student making between $10-12k/year.

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