In New York, crossing into a pricier ZIP code costs $2,396 a month. In Atlanta it costs $695.

Two renters in the same metro area can pay wildly different rent, and how different depends on which metro you're in. We took every ZIP code within 40 miles of ten downtowns and measured the gap between the cheap end and the expensive end of each market.

In New York that difference is $2,396 a month. In Atlanta it's $695.

The spread, metro by metro

The columns below are the 10th and 90th percentile ZIP codes in each metro, so they represent the affordable and expensive ends without letting a single outlier distort things.

New York's spread is nearly three and a half times Atlanta's. Putting it another way, choosing the right ZIP in New York is worth $28,752 a year, while the same decision in Atlanta is worth $8,340. Both matter, but they're different orders of decision.

Why the spread is the number that matters

Most rent coverage ranks metros by how expensive they are. The spread tells you something the average can't, which is how much your search is actually worth.

In a wide-spread market like New York or Los Angeles, the difference between a good search and a lazy one can be enormous, and moving a few miles can reset your entire housing budget. In a compressed market like Atlanta or Houston, the ZIP codes look more similar, so hunting for a bargain neighborhood doesn't return much, and you're better off negotiating on a specific unit or timing the lease.

At the cheap end, Atlanta's affordable ZIP codes sit at $1,565, which is higher than the cheap end in Denver, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston. Atlanta is compressed at a fairly high level, so it's the floor that's expensive there rather than the ceiling.

Houston has the lowest floor on the list at $1,242, and a fairly narrow spread on top of it, which makes it the most consistently affordable large metro in this group.

To dig into specific areas, our ZIP code rent guide shows how to pull the median for any ZIP, and the most expensive ZIP codes ranking covers the top end nationally.

Sources

• RentDataNow ZIP-level rent data for all ZIP codes within 40 miles of each downtown, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026

• Cheap and expensive ends are the 10th and 90th percentile ZIP code medians within each metro