Santa Rosa makes WalletHub’s list of ‘Best Places to Rent in America’

Santa Rosa is among the best places to rent in the United States, according to a report out this week by financial website WalletHub.

Santa Rosa squeezed into the middle of WalletHub’s list of “2022's Best & Worst Places to Rent in America” and was ranked number 71 out of 182 listed cities, between Billings, Montana, and Mobile, Alabama.

To put together the ranking, WalletHub looked at the 150 most populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state, and gathered data related to each city’s rental market, affordability and quality of life.

To determine rental markets and affordability, Wallethub compared statistics such as rental vacancies, average home size, rent-price changes over the year, and cost of living in each city. Quality of life stats included commute times, recreation options, favorable weather, school rankings and even state bedbug laws for rental properties.

While Santa Rosa ranked low in the rental market and affordability metric, coming in at 150 out of 182, it scored near the top in quality of life at 18.

Columbia, Maryland — a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages —topped the list of best places to rent, followed by Overland Park, Kansas; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Bismarck, North Dakota; and Lincoln, Nebraska.

The worst city to rent in, according to WalletHub, is Detroit, Michigan.

San Francisco was the top city in California to make the list, coming in at 14. Other cities in the state that outranked Santa Rosa included San Jose (20), Fremont (22), Irvine (25), Huntington Beach (60), San Diego (62) and Santa Clarita (68).

California cities that were ranked lower than Santa Rosa included Bakersfield (73), Sacramento (101), Fresno (113), Los Angeles (124), Oakland (136), Stockton (156), Modesto (163) and San Bernardino (180).