Rent Affordability Calculator
Find affordable rent from monthly income using the 28% and 30% rules.
Returns maximum monthly rent, remaining budget, and housing cost management tips.
How much rent you can carry comes down to one number: the share of your income that housing takes. Push it too high and everything else in the budget gets squeezed, which is what “cost burdened” means.
The 30% rule Maximum affordable rent = Gross monthly income × 30%
The figure is not arbitrary. The Brooke Amendment of 1969 capped rent in US public housing at 25% of tenant income, and Congress raised that ceiling to 30% in 1981. It stuck. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) still counts anyone paying more than 30% of income for housing as cost burdened, and more than 50% as severely cost burdened. Mortgage lenders use a close cousin: the 28/36 rule puts housing at 28% of gross income and all debt payments together at 36%.
Worked example: Annual gross salary: $76,000 Monthly gross income: $76,000 / 12 = $6,333 Maximum rent (30% rule): $6,333 × 0.30 = $1,900/month
Gross or net? The 50/30/20 check The 30% rule runs on gross income, which is generous, because a good slice of that money never reaches your account. A 50/30/20 budget splits take-home pay instead: 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings and debt repayment. Rent has to fit inside that 50% alongside food, utilities and getting to work. If rent alone eats the whole half, the rule has already failed.
What landlords ask for, and why it differs Two screening conventions are in circulation and they are not the same number. “40 times the rent” means annual income of 40 × the monthly rent, which works out to exactly 30% of gross. “3 times the rent” means monthly income of 3 × the rent, which is 33.3%. The second is looser, and outside New York it is the more common of the two. So the floor a landlord will accept often sits a little above the ceiling the same tenant should be aiming at.
The costs that are not in the rent Renters insurance, any utility the lease does not bundle, parking, internet, and in a lot of buildings a monthly pet fee. Budget those separately. A $1,900 apartment where you pay your own electricity and water is not the same deal as a $1,900 apartment where you do not.
The percentage itself travels. A 30% ceiling means the same thing in pounds, euros or shekels, and only the rents change.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
SuperGlobalCalculator is independently built and maintained. See how we build and verify our calculators.