Shawnee among best cities to rent luxury apartments for a deal: study

A Kansas City suburb offers the region’s best bang for the buck when it comes to renting high-end apartments.

Shawnee, with a population of 65,540, is the area’s best city to rent a luxury apartment, according to a new study from rental listing website RentCafé. It’s also No. 3 in the nation.

Using data from sister company Yardi Matrix, RentCafé researchers analyzed the average rent and size of high-end apartments in more than 600 cities with a minimum population of 10,000, at least 1,000 units and four properties (completed and classified as high-end). The final rankings that determined “great value” are based on four metrics: 

• Average rent as of February (35%)
• Average square footage (35%)
• Share of high-end units within a city (15%) 
• Share of high-end units within top locations as defined by Yardi Matrix  (15%)

Shawnee stood out to RentCafé with “some of the most spacious apartments on the list — 1,231 sq. ft. on average at a price of $1,173 per month.”