The city of Plano could roll out a new tagline for prospective residents: You want big apartments? We got ’em.
A new ApartmentGuide.com study has determined that Plano has the biggest one- and two-bedroom apartments in the country.
Plano’s average one-bedroom apartment measures 825 square feet while a two-bedroom comes in at 1,200 square feet. Plano’s studio apartments are the third-largest at 608 square feet, an analysis of the 100 biggest U.S. cities determined.
In contrast, Portland, Ore., one-bedrooms average 655 square feet, slightly bigger than a Plano studio. Portland studios average 435 square feet while its two-bedrooms are 935 square feet.
The study took the nation’s 100 largest cities — those with more than 220,000 residents — then considered the sizes of all available studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments and ranked them each from smallest to largest. ApartmentGuide.com then took the combined average rankings to determine the overall cities with the smallest and largest apartments.
Dallas represented in the study, ranking 10th in apartment size. Austin was ranked the 20th smallest.
Plano is a renter’s haven. The city ranked behind neighboring Frisco in a RENTCafé analysis that tracked the increase in the percentage of renters vs. homeowners over the past decade.
In the ApartmentGuide.com study, it did not rationalize why Plano topped its biggest apartment list, except to say “guess everything is, indeed, bigger in Texas.” But the folks at ApartmentGuide.com did take a stab at why Portland, Ore., topped the smallest apartment category.
“Representing significant slices of Portland population, hipsters, vegans, foodies, athletes, artists, Bohemians and mountain folk all help to make Portland young, a group that spends much of their time out on the trails, in the mountains or hanging out at cafés and vape shops,” the study says.
That contrasts Plano’s demographic, which is slightly older (38.6 years to Portland’s 36.9). Portland had the steepest increase in the millennial population over the past decade and was described by The New York Times as a “Retirement Community for the Young.”
Based on Plano’s 2020 Community Profile, Plano residents are not exactly “mountain folk” with 35 percent of its population 25 and older holding a bachelor’s degree with a median household income of $92,045.
The study kept piling on: “Portland tends to foster a communal vibe, a socially connected life that minimizes the need for spacious living quarters in favor of sustainable space. The need for large apartments is minimal for the small amount of time at home with Postmates and Labradoodles.”
Hey, you can still dig into a Postmate meal and pet your Labradoodle in a spacious Plano apartment.
