Want to lower the rent pain? Double-up.

My trusty spreadsheet used some curious rent data from LendingTree to quantify what almost every budget-watching tenant knows: having a roommate in a two-bedroom unit is financially better than going solo in a one-bedroom rental. The stats were based on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “ fair market rents ” for 50 large metropolitan areas, including seven in California.

In the seven California metros, the median results showed that doubling up cut an individual renter’s monthly costs by 38%, according to my comparison of HUD rent estimates for the year ending October 2026. Note that HUD tracks rent and utility costs for newer tenants in buildings that are 2 years or older, at the slightly below-average 40th percentile.

We

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