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Stop me if this falls under the banned "political" point, but I'm curious. I repeatedly heard from around the "western world", that in some corners of for example the US, couples have to work 2 jobs each to even afford rent + groceries. Especially because rent makes up 30,50, sometimes even more % of their income. I almost exclusively have friends and family in Germany so I am interested in some annecdotal stories/approximations. How much of your income (after taxes and obligatory expenses like health insurance in some countries) goes into your rent/paying of you house/flat if you own? And what seems to be the average where you live?

Around here (Berlin, Germany), average rent for 60m² seems to be in the ballpark of 1270 €, which would be roughly 25% of the average net-income of a couple (both working average jobs).
I personally am lucky enough to have a quite cheap 84m² flat, so rent comes down to around 12-13% of our family of 4 net-income (I work 1 fulltime job at 39h a week and my wife currently has a small student job).

As mentioned: just a rough ballbark would be quite interesting to me

I pay 29% of the take home salary on a mortgage.

But then I earn pretty well and have a pretty large chunk of equity as well as a fairly good rate.

I don't understand how a lot of people can afford rent, where the rent of a 2 bed house here is more than the mortgage on my 4 bed.

Take home salary (after tax, national insurance, health insurance, pension and other work related benefits) is £2,610.00

Monthly rent is £825.00

So….approx 31%.

However, I’ll soon be a lock, stock and indeed barrel, homeowner via inheritance.

In real terms? My deductions are currently £700, or 21% (we in the UK get a tax free allowance, which can vary depending on income like work place benefits).

So going rent and mortgage free will be, what, equivalent to a 40% pay rise or so?

Yes I am feeling very lucky, despite the circumstances of this soon to be change in arrangements, a little smug too.

Half my monthly paycheck goes to rent.

Don't earn enough to get a mortgage on anywhere in the city I live in and I was lucky to get a flat with just one other person. Pretty much everyone I know has minimum 3 in their flats, sometimes more (not including partners).

Can't draw a grand picture because discrepancies are too huge, but while rents themselves are not cheap, heating them is ruinous.

For my part, I rent a tiny apartment of 32 square meters next to the town center in Verdun and I pay 350 euros plus 71 of electricity.

"Normal" (that is, apartments where more than one person can live) are about 500 euros minimal a month.

And Verdun is fairly cheap.

Not talking.houses, renting a house is madness, Around 1000 euros at lowest.

As a welder, depending on the kind of weld you do, you can earn from 1500.to 2000 or so.euros.

Slovenia here. German prices or higher, Czech wages.

Renting a 50m2 apartment at market prices would be over minimum wage here without utilities.

Portsmouth, UK. I pay a mortgage on a 4-bed terraced property which I share with my wife and kids.
Our mortgage is 33% of my take-home pay and we can just about get by on my income alone. Bills, food, fuel and extra-curriculars take up pretty much everything I earn and I'm lucky to have £100 to myself at the end of the month.
My wife is back studying and her income contribution is mostly from a student maintenance loan, which we rely on for home improvements. We rent out a spare bedroom as well which we put into savings. Our plan is to maintain this standard of living until my wife graduates, at which point we will have a second income and likely move house again.

Wow, that sounds pretty grim. For context: Berlin while being the capital still is... relatively cheap. In the sense of the prices being far lower than in real metropolis like New York or London or the richer German cities like Munich or Hamburg. But they have been rising fast the last years. Like... +50/+100% compared to 10 years back. Luckily it is not that easy for landlords to raise the rent on existing contracts, but whenever a flat gets free, the rent raises A LOT

But none of my circle of friends lives with others without needing too. They all either live alone in appartments fitting for their number (30-50m² for one person sounds fair in my opinion) or with partner and kids in 60-100 m². A couple of them have bought or build houses and it doesn't look as if they couldn't afford their mortgages so far. And I know nobody who HAS to work two jobs. (I took up some minor site job for some month, mostly because it was interesting work).

@ Lord_blackfang: my condolences. It's something I hear a lot from eastern europeans, that the prices adjusted to german levels without the wages following suit.

For clarity? I’m paid a London wage, as that’s where our organisation was based when I joined.

However, I live in a coastal town, closer to France than London, so my rent is comparatively cheap for a spacious, two bedroom basement flat.

I again count myself lucky that I’m in the reverse situation of many. London income, 33% under national average rent.

However, if I wound up on minimum wage, I’d likely need to move house, downsizing.

27% rent, 9% service charge, 5% local authority tax, 8% utilities. So 50% of take home salary to live in flat.

Edit - nieghbours seem to be paying £200 odd more than me. So If was was doing that it would be around 61%.

Council Tax is a scunner, as it’s tied to the value of the property, not the number of occupants.

Living on my own, I get a discount (20%, I think?). But if I had two flatmates, we’d just need to pay it between us.

Local services do need to be paid for, but man, this is not a justly calculated tax at all, and it takes no account of someone’s ability to actually pay it.

One day we will have a government that will move to a sane property tax system. There are many to choose from.

Tied to the value of the property in 1991 I believe. That totally makes it better…

I was lucky, I got in when interest rates were low and just before prices boomed. Therefore, I pay about 26% of my take home on mortgage and the like.

However, my kid is about to go to college in a different city and we have been looking at helping them buy a small place there. Forget about it. Current rates and pricing is crazy, and renting is only marginally cheaper than buying. No idea how anyone under 40 survives, unless they are teaming up with a minimum of 2-5 others for a place.

Ranting in spoilers.....

Deleted as my comment was unpleasantly cynical.

Mozzamanx wrote:
Portsmouth, UK. I pay a mortgage on a 4-bed terraced property which I share with my wife and kids.
Our mortgage is 33% of my take-home pay and we can just about get by on my income alone. Bills, food, fuel and extra-curriculars take up pretty much everything I earn and I'm lucky to have £100 to myself at the end of the month.
My wife is back studying and her income contribution is mostly from a student maintenance loan, which we rely on for home improvements. We rent out a spare bedroom as well which we put into savings. Our plan is to maintain this standard of living until my wife graduates, at which point we will have a second income and likely move house again.

We're not far from you - Chandler's Ford, between Eastleigh and Winchester. Paying £800 a month on mortgage, which is including a slight over-payment. While that's only a third-ish of my pay, my wife doesn't earn much (teaching assistant) and it all goes. Don't have a lot of discretionary spending budget at the moment!

Welcome to Canada where rents and property purchase prices have become ludicrous in the last few years.

I lucked out and am privileged. I live in our capital city in a 2 bedroom about 800 sq m or so, top floor of a three storey walk up. It's a quiet street fair near to most conveniences.
I moved in 12 years ago just before the whole thing skyrocketed.

I am paid a decent wage for a very soul-destroying job.
So I pay approximately a third of my take home for rent plus electricity (heat and water are included). Another third goes to a storage unit, car payments and auto insurance, and celphones.
My wife is disabled so we're a very very rare 1 income couple.
Though I'd like to save some coin groceries have gone up and... well... I still collect and paint WH40K. And read a lot of books. I occasionally can afford to spring for a new hat or a tie or something.

We aren't doing horribly and my wife received an inheritance last year so that's our emergency funding for just in case situations.

We are both collectors so the 2 bed is kind of full, and we have discussed looking at renting either a 3 bed or finding a house for rent with 2 bedrooms and a basement space, so we could both have our hobby rooms. However, we would be paying about double what we pay now. Other apartments in our building go for about 50% to 60% more than my rent when they are available.

Though word is that rents have been coming down a tiny bit lately due to continuing builds and softening demand.

I used to live in Toronto. You need working room mates to afford rent in Toronto. Vancouver is worse.

I don't make enough to buy a house so that'll likely never happen.

I make somewhere in the $800 to $1,000 per pay period, and my rent is $300 per same time. So right about a third of my money goes to rent.

Pay is biweekly, so it's $7,800 a year.

For those wondering why the rent is weirdly timed, I still live with my parents. I'd be paying at LEAST half again as much just on rent for a worse living situation if I wasn't.

Edit: I'm fortunate, though. My parents are super supportive and kind, so I've been able to save up a good chunk of change for emergencies (like car repairs or medical stuff), as well as having money left over to do fun things with.

When my wife and I moved to St. Louis we quite deliberately picked a place to rent at 32% of my income. It's not a small place, but it's definitely not in a nice neighborhood.

Our expectation was that the wife would quickly find a job and we'd be able to move or buy something better. Then she had a stroke... (For the moment she's on full disability and that brings us down to 19% but under the circumstances we're waiting to see what happens to disability the next four years rather than move to a nicer place. In the meantime... save, save, save!)

 Vulcan wrote:
When my wife and I moved to St. Louis we quite deliberately picked a place to rent at 32% of my income. It's not a small place, but it's definitely not in a nice neighborhood.

Our expectation was that the wife would quickly find a job and we'd be able to move or buy something better. Then she had a stroke... (For the moment she's on full disability and that brings us down to 19% but under the circumstances we're waiting to see what happens to disability the next four years rather than move to a nicer place. In the meantime... save, save, save!)

I live in Columbia, about 2 hours west of you on I-70. Higher rent is the main reason I would never want to move to St. Louis (well, that and the traffic and the crime rates), despite the fact that I could probably find a better job there (most firms around here want only experienced workers in my field, not people with only school experience).

I currently work retail, and after taxes I take home a little north of 2k per month (USD, of course). My rent, which includes water, sewage, and (recently added) fiber internet is just under $850/month. Additionally, depending on season, I pay 50-75/month for electricity and 25-50 on gas (my only gas appliance is my heater, and it's annoying that I have to keep the pilot light lit even in the summer). I'm well aware that rent is lower here in mid-Missouri than in big cities like New York or Los Angeles, but between rent and utilities I'm still spending nearly half of my take home pay, and that's before I factor in groceries, gas and insurance for my vehicle, and other necessities. I consider myself somewhat fortunate that I can still afford to spend money on plastic crack; if I had major medical expenses I'd be in real trouble, especially as my employer-provided health insurance isn't very good (very high deductible and out-of-pocket maximum). Which means it would probably be in my best interest to lose some weight (I'm probably double what I should weigh).

The rampant inflation of the last four years hasn't helped matters at all. I probably spend nearly double what I used to spend on groceries, and my rent has gone way up in the last few years too. Those numbers have gone up much more than my pay has, proportionally. And any time you get a raise that is less than the rate of inflation, you just took a pay cut.

I'm quite disheartened to hear that. 30-40% sounds ugly.

Over here it is a bit.. strange. Berlin is building wise quite patchworky. Especially in the east you have lots of slab construction buildings as you know them from eastern Europe which mostly got nicely renovated, modernized and isolated. They are not a sight to see for sure, but incredibly convenient as rent is relatively low, utilities like heating are cheap and the neighbourhoods are... efficiently planned (enough parking spots, public transport etc.) Also as few people want to buy these properties, gentrification pressure is low and the rents don't get crazy and oftentimes rent increases are limited by law or statutes (a friend of mine has an old leaseand rents 5 rooms, 100m2 for 500€...) . But quite some folks don't want to live there because it is not hip.

On the other hand there are quarters of the city were most housing is bought up, turned into Luxury/upper middle class flats owned as a form of investment and as the investor wants to make his money back, prices start to explode.

Also building/buying a house in and around Berlin is expensive too in the sense of houses that rationally should cost 250k being listed for 500k, because they still find people willing to pay those prices.


We are lucky in so far, that I get payed well enough that all things included (child benefits and my wifes minijob) we come back around slightly above what the average couple makes here (in the Ballpark of 5500 €/Month (on a 800 € rent including heat and water, electricity is another ~40). But our net pay already includes unemployment insurance, pension and health insurance with excellent coverage. Also we get 29 days of payed leave and payed sick leave and education costs are socialiced so we don't have to pay for our kids school and their ticket for public transport is also cheaper.

So at the end of the month we still have some money for charity and hobby and some to put away for bad times

We're lucky enough to own our home but if we were renting, based on the rents paid by the people above and below us and advertised rents for other places on our street, it would be almost exactly 50% of my wife and my combined take home pay. It would be more than 100% of mine.

For context, my wife is university lecturer and I was until recently but have moved to high school teaching (not much of a shift in salary). We do live in a four bed flat right next to a university and in the most expensive part of Glasgow, though, so rents are very high here because it's mostly buy-to-let landlords fleecing students and very skewed. I don't know what a mortgage would be.

Not alot? i pay aboout 250 in bills, but make around 4500 a month.
I live at home to take care of an ailing parent, but the home is mine(we put it in my name so other family members cant say it isnt mine)
im working off living a very spartan lifestyle this year, with all the stuff going on, im worried about my student loans, so im paying thme off all in a year

About 12% on mortgage, 5% on council tax and probably another 5% on regular bills (energy, internet, phones, etc.) for a 2-bed semi detached house in the Midlands.

I’m fortunate in having a well paid profession and having bought my house at the absolute slump in the market in 2009.

I make about $3600 per month take home. I'm currently single after a divorce. My Mortgage is about $590 per month on a 1500 square foot per floor (two floor) 5-bed, 2.5 bath home. Insurance for the home is about $1200/year, property tax is about $2500 per year, and utilities (gas, electric, water, garbage, sewer) are about $145 per month on average.

So, home cost alone: about 16.5%
Home cost with Insurance and taxes: 25%
With Insurance, taxes, and utilities: 29%

Things were a bit easier when I was still married, as we had approximately the same income.

Mortgage is about 30% of my monthly take home pay. Adding in council tax and utilities and suchlike and I bumps up to about 40%.

Ahhh man. New council tax bill will be out in the next few weeks.

I’ve paid the last few years as a lump sum, as it’s somewhat more tolerable that way.

 Jadenim wrote:
About 12% on mortgage, 5% on council tax and probably another 5% on regular bills (energy, internet, phones, etc.) for a 2-bed semi detached house in the Midlands.

I’m fortunate in having a well paid profession and having bought my house at the absolute slump in the market in 2009.

For reference, my house is ~60m^2 (about 650sqft), plus a garage. Which is probably pretty average for a small family home in the UK.