Miami ranks as third most expensive college town, LA tops list

Even college students can’t be shielded from the high cost of living.

A new ranking shows Miami is among the top college towns with the highest off-campus rents.

HomeUnion studied rents within a two-mile radius of a university’s campus, in this case using the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and compared it to the metro area’s market rate rent to come up with the list.

Within two miles of UM, the median monthly rent was $2,812, 44 percent higher than $1,916 for the Miami metro area.

It’s important to note that the ranking excludes Florida International University and Miami Dade College, the latter of which is the largest college in the country. FIU’s enrollment in 2015 was 55,000 students and MDC’s was more than 92,000. UM, meanwhile, had about 17,000 students enrolled in 2015.

At No. 1 is Los Angeles. Near the University of California at Los Angeles, rents were a whopping 80 percent higher than the metro area, asking $4,343 a month, compared to $2,409 in greater L.A. UCLA enrolled 43,000 students last year.

HomeUnion said in the press release that the study shows how “living near campus is disproportionately more expensive than the market as a whole.”

For some parents, investing in condos may make more sense in South Florida, where residential rents are already notoriously high. Earlier this year, Zillow reported that renters in South Florida could expect to pay as much as 43.8 percent of their annual median incomes of $46,901 for housing. – Katherine Kallergis

Check out the full list below: