Grocery bills are topping out just two days before we sit down to elegant tablescapes and eight different kinds of potatoes, and ApartmentList wanted to know what everyone is obviously thinking: How many of these Thanksgiving feasts it would take for Americans to pay rent?
“To solve this all-important problem, we started with the hundreds of thousands of listings on our website and used that data to calculate the median price of a two-bedroom apartment in cities across the US. We then estimated the nationwide average price of a Thanksgiving dinner; we included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie for a total price of $51.50 (up 1.6% from last year). The average dinner price was then adjusted for each city using a grocery cost index. Finally, we divided the rent price by the city-specific dinner cost to arrive at the Turkey Index.”
So considering those numbers, how do American cities shape up? Naturally, New York City comes in first with a monthly two-bedroom apartment going for 70 turkey dinners (imagine how much gravy that includes!). Expensive San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles clocked in with 68.7, 51.8, and 44.7 turkey dinners each, respectively.
On the lower end, Cleaveland will only cost you 13.1 turkey dinners, Memphis will set you back only 15.1, and Albuquerque is at a modest 17.7 turkey dinners, too. For those in Dallas, you’ll need to shop for 28.3 belt-busting turkey dinners, in Houston it’s 32 chances to gobble ’til you wobble, and in Austin it’s 33.6 spreads to be grateful for.
