There Is A City With Smaller Apartments Than NYC

NEW YORK — As outrageous as it seemed, that 68-square-foot Upper West Side pad going for nearly $1,000 a month might be emblematic of Manhattan real estate. The borough boasts the second-smallest apartments in the nation in addition to the highest rents, according to a recent RentCafe report.

The real estate website's analyzed apartment sizes across the United States based on data from the Yardi Matrix, a real estate research platform. New units have gotten 5 percent smaller while average rent has spiked 28 percent over the past decade, the report published Friday found.

Manhattan tied with Chicago for the No. 2 spot on RentCafe's ranking of the cities with the tiniest homes. The borough's average apartment size is a measly 733 square feet, barely bigger than Seattle's 711 square feet.

Those sizes make rentals in other cities feel like penthouses. Tallahassee, Florida has the nation's roomiest apartments with an average size of 1,038 square feet, followed by 1,205 square feet in Marietta, Georgia, RentCafe found. The national average this year is 941 square feet.

Manhattan is nation's most expensive rental market despite its cramped dwellings. The borough's average rent was $4,181 in October, up from $4,021 in the same month last year, according to RentCafe.

But the news isn't all bad — Manhattan's average size has grown by 12 percent from 2008 to 2018, bucking the national trend, RentCafe found. That's the fourth-largest increase in the nation behind 13 percent in San Francisco, 17 percent in Lewisville, Texas, and 19 percent in Lubbock, Texas.

Below are the 20 cities with the smallest average apartments, according to RentCafe. Read the full report here.

1. Seattle — 711 square feet
2. Chicago — 733 square feet
3. Manhattan — 733 square feet
4. Washington, D.C. — 736 square feet
5. San Francisco — 737 square feet
6. Tucson, Arizona — 738 square feet
7. Los Angeles — 771 square feet
8. Glendale, Arizona — 781 square feet
9. Phoenix, Arizona — 783 square feet
10. Minneapolis — 785 square feet
11. Wichita, Kansas — 787 square feet
12. Detroit — 791 square feet
13. Cleveland — 796 square feet
14. Mesa, Arizona — 801 square feet
15. Philadelphia — 801 square feet
16. Portland, Oregon — 802 square feet
17. Albuquerque, New Mexico — 804 square feet
18. Pittsburgh — 811 square feet
19. Toledo, Ohio — 811 square feet
20. El Paso, Texas — 812 square feet

(Lead image: Photo from Shutterstock)