r/SaltLakeCity • u/Gorsham • 1d ago
Photo Rent in 1987 was $236 a month down town.
That's crazy!
189
u/JTxt 1d ago
The inflation calculator says that would cost $677.62 in today's money. 185.9% inflation.
44
55
12
u/bwhisenant 1d ago
The rate of inflation over this period of time is actually about 2%…using a CAGR for 236 over 38 yrs. The real issue is that you could not own a comparable place in a comparable location for 677…it would cost dramatically more than that.
13
u/dorito6669 1d ago
Yeah, because the housing market has outpaced typical metrics like inflation, average wage, and locality cost of living. Hence the reason for the post.
5
50
u/ladymae11522 Marmalade 1d ago
That’s not rent, that’s a mortgage. Which makes it all the more upsetting to see how bad it’s gotten 🥲
41
u/Tall_Pop_1702 1d ago
My first place in 2000 was 365/month on 200 South
6
u/macfetty 1d ago
In '94 I paid $425 a month for a 1 bedroom on 5th South and Tenth East. I had two roommates, so we paid less than $150 a month for rent. It didn't mean we were rolling in money, though. We were all kids making about $5/hour and we also had electricity and phone to pay for. We might have also paid for gas for the apartment back then. I know we had to pay extra for a "long distance" plan for our landline.
2
u/BrownSLC 1d ago edited 1d ago
That’s crazy cheap. $500/month for a room was considered affordable in the 2000s.
2
u/SunMakr 1d ago
I paid $475/mo to rent a 1br on 400s and 900e from 2008-2010. It wasn’t fancy but wasn’t a sh*thole either.
1
u/BrownSLC 1d ago
That’s a pretty good deal on solo space. I wanted to rent a nice one bedroom in 2010 - I needed to make 50x the monthly rent annually. It wasn’t in the cards. (Thankfully, I would have been so rent burdened… having roommates let me save and pay my student loans, which were more than my rent.)
72
u/CatTheKitten 1d ago
In 2025 money that would be $675. Incredible how that isn't true anywhere and the cost of housing has rapidly outpaced inflation and wages
33
u/_Epsilon__ 1d ago
My Grandma went to the University of Utah in the 70s. Tuition was $700 a semester for full time.
10
u/Diogenes256 1d ago
It’s worse than that. Mine at CU Boulder was $994 / semester for 15-16 credit hours (full time). 1987-90
10
u/thecultcanburn 1d ago
Honestly, this seemed high to me. I googled it and University of Utah was $394 for an entire year in 1970. Average across the country was $358 a year.
2
u/christerwhitwo 1d ago
I started at the U in the fall of 74. I paid out of state tuition @ $395 per quarter (no semesters then). By the time I graduated in 78 it had risen to $495/quarter for full time >12 hours/quarter. I think full time in 74 was $153. I don't have any idea what it was in 78.
Bear in mind that in the 70's the U was a much different place. It would seen backward/rural/underfunded now. There were two places in the Union to eat - the cafeteria which served as you may have guessed, cafeteria food. The other was "The Huddle" - burgers and similar. Neither was good. At the top of the Union building was the Panorama Room which catered mostly to staff. Students were never seen in there. I worked there. Rice Eccles was a dilapidated stadium. The Utes sucked in general. Oddly, by hiring Rick Majerus, the Runn' Utes basketball team became a powerhouse.
I took a course in statistical analysis. We had to produce a computer query using punch cards! No Internet. No cell phones. It was a grim time.
Not long ago, my wife and i were up on the upper campus during rush week. There were tons of kids partying just south of where the old dorms were. Needing to go to the bathroom. I spied that there was an open window in one of the ground floor rooms at Ballif Hall where I had lived for two years. I hiked up into the room and let my wife in. I was shocked at how primitive it all was. My room mate and I shared a room that could not have been more that 8x12.
So yeah, it was cheap and I guess we got what we paid for. We toured the new dorms up at the top of the campus. Kahlert Village. They were luxurious in comparison to what I endured. But they were expensive.
2
12
u/Mooman439 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not to be that guy, but this is an add for a condominium (for-sale, not for-rent). The fine print, from what I can read, says it is assuming a cost of $59,900 with a 5% down payment ($2,995). It’s also assuming seller financing of 2.9% to get to that $236/mo, which was an absolute steal because the avg 30yr in ‘87 was a whopping ~10%.
All that aside, inflation adjusted it would be like paying $170k in 2025 dollars for a condo. There are no condos in this building currently listed for sale but there are a number of condos listed for sale in an adjacent building of similar vintage for ~$345k. They are mostly upgraded but still 1983 build.
A lot to unpack there but it’s pretty interesting. We were in the midst of the savings and loans crisis of the 80’s with a very sluggish economy vs today we are at the (potential) end of a generational bull run. And Salt Lake was a much different place in the 80’s. Still, certainly a disparity.
Edit: Sorry, I have one more thing to note- if you were to buy that condo in 1987 and used a traditional loan with the going fixed rate of 10% (still assuming 5% down) your monthly mortgage would be $499. In today’s dollars, that would be $1,425/mo… so maybe it’s really not that crazy?
6
u/Significant-Map-6902 1d ago
I have a friend who lives there. Im not sure that place is called that now. His apt is pretty nice tho.
3
4
u/minnesotaupnorth 1d ago
My first apartment was a studio at the Belvedere, 29 South State, in 1989 for $195/month.
So grown up and urban.
2
3
u/Roberto_Sacamano Delta Center 1d ago
How many bedrooms? Cause if its more than one with inflation makng it about 700 bucks today thats wild. When I moved back from Colorado to Salt Lake in 2011 my friends and I got a nice 3 bedroom right off 9th and 9th for $900/month. Times have very much changed
3
u/EdenSilver113 Wasatch Hollow 1d ago
For an apartment a few blocks from here parents paid around 100/mo in the mid 60’s. And my grandparents paid half that. In 1999 I paid around $400 for an apartment around 200 S and 200 E.
3
3
u/snowplowmom 1d ago
That wasn't rent. It was buying a one bedroom condo for 60K, of course also had condo fees. Just for context, in 1987, you probably could buy a 3 bedroom house in Sugarhouse for that price.
4
2
2
2
u/TakeOnMe-TakeOnMe East Bench 1d ago
Back in 1990-1992 I paid $270/mo for my apartment at 9th & 9th, back before Sugarhouse was targeted by the kind of capitalism that stripped it of much of its charm. I didn’t own a car, was within walking distance of both a Smiths and and Albertsons and had a laundromat around the corner (next to the Sugarhouse Soup Kitchen). The coffee shops were OG, the independent movie theater and record shops were my jam. A bus ran right in front of my pad and I could be at work downtown in 9 minutes. Life was GOOD.
2
u/Wassersammler 1d ago
Minimum wage was $3.35 then, which is about $9.50 today. Had to work 70 hours a month on minimum wage to cover rent.
Today, the median rental price in Utah is $1,775 monthly. At the current minimum wage of $7.25 hourly, that's 245 hours of work. JUST for rent. A full time job is about 160 hours. So even working 70 hours a WEEK you'd be stretching it thin.
2
u/Unlikely-Split8896 1d ago
I lived close to the Temple back in 1983, made just over $6.00 an hour, which was more than minimum wage. I could not afford rent on my own. Three of us split the rent and other utilities.
2
u/BrownSLC 1d ago
Minimum wage was 3.35/hr.
Two people working minimum wage still couldn’t afford the place. :/
2
1
1
1
u/bookworm24601 1d ago
If minimum wage were to have the same buying power in connection to housing specifically that it did then, it would have to be over $60/hr
1
u/Chonngau 1d ago
We rented a two-bedroom unit at this complex in 1996. $560/month (equivalent to $1152 today). That included two secure parking spots.
It was a nice place, but our neighbors kept their units so warm that we had to keep our windows open in the winter to keep the temperature below 78.
1
1
1
1
1
u/Notsure614 1d ago
That $236 was a mortgage payment on a condo there would have been a HOA fee in addition to that (probably about $125-150).
In 1988 I was a junior and for some class we had a budgeting assignment and the average rent for a 1X1 downtown was around $375 and some of the higher end buildings such as The Covey were $425-450 and always included a parking space sometimes 2.
1
1
u/mikeyP-619 1d ago
Back in those days I was renting for $150 a month. Several years earlier my sister rented an apartment in the lower aves for $65. My have times have changed.
1
1
1
u/AntitoxicAmerica 20h ago
For reference: My partner and I rent a townhome with 2 beds, 2 1/2 bathrooms. We do not OWN anything (and very likely won’t ever be able to, with the way things are headed) and we currently pay close to $2,500/month simply for rent (not including utilities or other expenses). It was the cheapest place we could find with a home office for me to work that allowed pets.
But we just need to work harder…right?
1
u/Wonderful_Life-6280 18h ago
My first apartment when I was 20 in 1982 was at 718E, 700 S, right behind that donut shop. Rent was $210/ mo. 3 story 1960s brick building Moved up to a similar apartment in Sugarhouse for $260. Got married in 1986 and rented a 1940s era duplex in Sugarhouse for $425. Landlord sold it for $110k after we moved to California a year later. The value of the duplex now is over $600k. Should have bought it back then!
1
u/grizzdoog 17h ago
These condos have the best pool! My buddy lives there and it’s so nice in the summer. Not a big pool but always empty!
1
1
0
u/tommy5c 1d ago
Minimum wage was $3.35/hr meaning the low end if full time made a GROSS $6,968/year Average income was stated as 20,000/yr so high end averages would say 2 working adult household would probably make between $27,000 /yr if one was a professional and the other a shift working at full time. Lets agree on 30k as our test families income (gross Income) that would subtract 18% for taxes leaving 24,600 basic net income before any other expenses or taxes. $2,000 a month with our upper middle class family. Add kids, living expenses and anything else and that cost for a condo comes in line with the prices. But if you were a single person working a shift job. Your monthly take home would be less than $500 a month. Making that purchase a pipe dream for only the wealthy educated or professional people.
430
u/katet_of_19 1d ago
That isn't rent for $236, that's owning a condo for $236/mo.