[bobthepanda]

If you are a family or couple renting a 2BR, you probably have more than one income earner. Exception to this case would be a single parent with children, but that rate is not especially high. And smaller households (i.e., just a couple, or a single mother and one child, etc.) are not especially likely to get a 2BR.

If you are a single person with a single income, you are not renting a 2BR. You might have a roommate, but in that case you are a two income household splitting the rent on a 2BR.

Single income for 2BR is such an odd case to base an entire statistic around.

[saturdaysaint]

If you're in a major city, this is probably a safe assumption, but there are plenty of areas where an extra bedroom is a pretty modest expense. A few years ago I had a nice 2 bedroom apartment right off the campus of a major midwest college for $900 a month - I had a nice king sized bed in the bedroom, and a man cave room with a gaming rig and music gear. It's one of the advantages of living outside of the biggest cities.

[notfromhere]

Or if you live in an outer neighborhood of a big city.

I have a 2br in Chicago and its very affordable on one income

[pmiller2]

Indeed, an SF salary and an East Bay apartment is what allows me to afford my 2BR.

[ghaff]

>Single income for 2BR is such an odd case to base an entire statistic around.

It may be the wrong choice for this analysis but it's not some weird outlier in many places in the country. Over the years, I've known many single people renting 2BR apartments and even buying houses.

[amyjess]

> If you are a single person with a single income, you are not renting a 2BR. You might have a roommate, but in that case you are a two income household splitting the rent on a 2BR.

Hi, I'm a single person on a single income renting a 2BR townhouse.

I've lived in my current home for just over a decade (since November 2007), and during this time I've only had roommates for two very short periods. Both of those times were when I temporarily took in friends who were suffering from long-term unemployment and had nowhere else to go. One of them, in 2008, got a new job and moved out a few months after he moved in with me, and the other, in 2011, lived with me for two weeks before he mended fences with his parents and decided to move back to his hometown.

I think I might have had a roommate for a grand total of six months in the nearly 11 years I've lived here.

I like my space.

(edit: Oh, and my best friend just bought a huge house in an exurb. He's single and has no roommates.)

[eropple]

Same here. I lived in 2BR apartments by myself until I moved in with my girlfriend. One office, one bedroom. Life is better when you can literally sprawl out on the floor.

We live in a 4BR with a basement, with two roommates who will be (slowly) transitioning out of the house over the next couple years. And with two dogs. It's literally basically Just Enough House to feel comfortable for us.

[dragonwriter]

> If you are a family or couple renting a 2BR, you probably have more than one income earner. Exception to this case would be a single parent with children

Or a married couple with children and a stay at home parent. Or a working adult and their non-SS-eligible (e.g., immigrated too late in life to get the needed work credits) elderly parent that they care for. Or...

> If you are a single person with a single income, you are not renting a 2BR.

You might for a home office, especially if you do a kind of work from home that involves substantial paperwork and reference material, not just a simple workstation.

[j88439h84]

Two parents, one working, seems pretty common to me.

[ProfessorLayton]

While it is common, it's more common to have both parents working, 61.9% are dual-income. [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf

[j88439h84]

Should add in the single parents, no?

[lloyd-christmas]

From my experience, this is incredibly uncommon in the northeast. I only know one couple like that in NY, and she has a large enough trust fund that neither one of them really needs to work at all. Every other couple with children that I know actually living in the cities are 2 income households. The same holds for everyone I know in Boston.

[dragonwriter]

> The same holds for everyone I know

It is a mistake to assume that this justifies conclusions about the general population.

[lloyd-christmas]

> seems pretty common to me.

> From my experience

> the general population.

I've already qualified my comment, and both of us were discussing personal experiences.

If you'd prefer to discuss the general population instead of trading personal experiences, here is some historical data from pew, as well as the most recent report from the BLS:

http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-20...

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf

This shows that my experience is closer to the general population than the experience I responded to. I'd venture a guess that the distribution of that ~62% isn't uniform across the country and is likely weighted by cost of living (which is likely why our experiences differ).