How have rent and mortgage rates changed over time? We asked, you answered: What was your lowest rent or mortgage payment? When and where was that?
Ashland Manor Apartments & Townhouses, Columbia, Mo. In 2016, $524, two bedrooms, 1.5 bath, washer/dryer included, 1,000 sq ft townhouse. When I left in 2023: $650, same unit. Current rent for the unit in 2025: $720. That was the whole unit, not per bedroom. Can’t recommend this property enough. Great onsite property manager, responsive maintenance team, and just super friendly and wants to ensure tenants have a safe and healthy place to call home.
– Blake Willoughby
“Married student housing” at Central Missouri State University, now UCM, was a trailer park packed with “cracker box” mobile homes. Those units were 10-by-30 feet and $90 a month. Warrensburg, Mo., 1983. A few days before classes ended, the couple in the trailer directly behind us apparently had a spat (he was a little bitty Nigerian guy, she was a, well, rotund white woman), and she shot him dead. Police asked us if we heard anything. Somehow, we hadn’t. Not too many years later, the university removed all the tiny mobile homes and built a bunch of cottages that, by comparison to the tin can we lived in, looked like the Taj Mahal. We bought a $48,000 house in 1987. Monthly mortgage was $280, and we were just a few houses down from my wife’s grandmother, who had a $40/mo. mortgage for the house she’d had for twenty-plus years.
– Jodie Jackson Jr
$125 a month for a room on Waugh Street. Bathroom was down the hall. I got a room and a closet and a lot of six-legged roommates. Early ‘80s.
– Clay Cottingham
I was the fourth roommate on the couch in a 3-bedroom apartment at [redacted] Apartments here in Columbia, Mo., the summer of 1996. Splitting the rent four ways I think the even shares were $110/month, and they cut me a deal for living on the couch, so I’m pretty sure I paid $95 and they all paid $115 each month.
– Jay Sparks
My first apartment was in 1973, top floor of a five-story apartment building in Bedford Heights, Ohio. The one-bedroom apartment was $150 a month and included utilities.
– Dianna Borsi O’Brien
My cheapest rent was $730 for a 3-bed, 2-bath townhome on the north side of Columbia off Smiley Lane, 2021–2022. Now paying $1,000 rent for an 1,800 sq ft older house central to town, which is still a great deal. Looking to purchase a home next spring though.
– Lindsay Rose James
$100 for a 2-bedroom apartment in Macon, Mo., in 1986.
– Liz Swanson
2 bedroom apartment in Columbia, 2000. We paid $405/month.
– Carrie Conklin
1979, working in Boonville at my first full-time job after bachelor’s degree. I rented a two-bedroom mobile home (trailer) for $65 a month. I think I paid a small amount toward the pad rental.
– Randy Rodgers
$85/month third floor attic apartment, Hyde Park neighborhood in Kansas City, Mo. 1975.
– Vanessa Hall
$206 mortgage payment. $85 rent, including utilities, Marshall. 1970s.
– Paula Southman Stanley
$175 for a 2-bedroom duplex in Fulton, Mo., 1995.
– Rebecca Dykhouse
My first “real” rental — where my name was actually on the lease — came when I graduated from college in 2012. I was 19, earning $24,000 a year at my first design job, and living in downtown Los Angeles. I shared a $1,750/month studio loft with two other girls, each of us paying around $600. We built makeshift walls out of plywood and sandbags, turning the open floor plan into three semi-private cubicles. It wasn’t the cutest, but it was clever — and it was the only way I could afford to be there. Honestly? It kind of ruled. I miss those days and those roommates … but I am glad for real walls and doors.
– Jordan Watts
