Is North Penn’s rental market becoming unaffordable, or does it just feel that way when a new lease hits your inbox?
To answer that, it helps to look at three pieces together: how fast rents are rising, how those rents compare with local incomes, and how many households are already stretched past the usual affordability line.
Housing officials usually call a household “cost burdened” when it spends more than 30 percent of its income on rent and related housing costs, and “severely cost burdened” when that share climbs above 50 percent. This standard comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is used by the Census Bureau in its affordability statistics.
Nationally, that affordability line is being crossed more often. The Census Bureau estimates that in 2023, about 21 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing, nearly half of all renter households in the country.
The question for the North Penn area is whether local rents and incomes are pushing more households into that same category.
North Penn sits inside the Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington metro area, so the best official gauge of rent inflation is the local Consumer Price Index. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between December 2023 and December 2024 the index for rent of primary residence in the Philadelphia metro area rose 5.5 percent, while the overall price index rose 3.3 percent.
In plain language, shelter costs in the wider region are still increasing faster than the typical basket of goods and services. Even if your wages keep up with general inflation, your rent bill has likely been taking a bigger bite than groceries or gas.
On the ground in North Penn, Census data give a snapshot of what renters are paying. In Lansdale borough, a core community for the North Penn School District, the median gross rent over the 2019–2023 period was 1,390 dollars per month. Median gross rent includes not just the advertised rent but also typical utility costs, so it is a good measure of what households actually have to budget for each month.
Nearby townships with similar suburban housing stocks also sit in that ballpark. For example, Skippack Township, another Montgomery County municipality, has a median gross rent of 1,548 dollars over the same period. Montgomery County level data compiled from recent American Community Survey releases show median gross rent above 1,600 dollars, again reflecting the relatively high costs in this suburban collar county around Philadelphia.
Taken together with the regional CPI figures, this picture suggests that North Penn renters are exposed to a rental market where prices are both higher than the state average and still rising faster than overall inflation.
One reason the North Penn area remains attractive despite higher housing costs is income. Montgomery County is one of the highest income counties in Pennsylvania. Recent American Community Survey data, compiled by DataUSA from Census microdata, put the median household income in Montgomery County at about 111,521 dollars in 2023, up from around 107,441 dollars the year before.
In Lansdale itself, median household income is lower than the countywide figure but still well above the statewide average: around 86,460 dollars, compared with about 76,081 dollars for Pennsylvania households overall in the 2019–2023 ACS period.
On paper, that gap between incomes and rents should help many North Penn households keep their rent-to-income ratio under the 30 percent line. A household bringing in the county median income and paying something like the Lansdale median gross rent would be at roughly 15 percent of income going to rent and utilities.
The reality is more uneven. Median figures hide the fact that not all renters earn the county median, and that many lower income workers in the service, retail, or care sectors are essential to the local economy but earn far less. Local planning documents acknowledge this mismatch. Montgomery County’s own housing and community development plan highlights the need for new affordable rental housing targeted to households below 80 percent of area median income, with specific projects aimed at seniors and lower income renters.
For those households, a median rent in the 1,400 to 1,600 dollar range can quickly move from manageable to precarious.
Cost burden statistics help bridge the gap between rent levels and income distribution. A series from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, based on American Community Survey data, tracks the share of “burdened” households in Montgomery County, meaning those spending 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs.
In 2023, about 27.6 percent of households in Montgomery County fell into that cost burdened category, down slightly from close to 29 percent in 2019.
That is a complicated result. On one hand, it looks better than the national picture, where roughly half of renter households are cost burdened. On the other hand, more than one in four households in a relatively affluent county are still spending at least 30 percent of their income on housing. In pockets of the county that include older housing stock or lower wages, the share is likely higher.
For North Penn specifically, older American Community Survey profiles of the school district show rental vacancy rates in the single digits and a housing stock that has long been largely built out. That means new supply in the immediate area is limited, and renters are often bidding against each other for a small number of available units.
Recent comprehensive planning work in Towamencin Township, which is part of the broader North Penn area, underscores this tightness. The township’s draft comprehensive plan notes that very little new housing has been built over the past two decades, contributing to low vacancy rates and strong demand for existing homes and apartments.
When supply is constrained in this way, even moderate rent increases can tip more households into cost burden territory.
Across the state, housing vacancy rates have drifted down. A recent analysis by the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors, using Census data, notes that statewide vacancy rates declined to about 9 percent in 2022. In a built-out suburban county like Montgomery, healthy rental vacancy is usually thought of as something in the mid single digits. Once vacancy gets too low, households searching for a place to live have less bargaining power and face fewer options within their budget.
Montgomery County’s own planning and housing documents emphasize that there is a strong market for both existing homes and multifamily units, and that new multifamily construction is often geared toward higher rent segments. That combination of tight vacancy and more expensive new product is exactly what pushes mid market renters into older units and, in some cases, into longer commutes in search of lower rents.
The North Penn communities are directly in that squeeze: well connected by rail and road to employment centers, attractive school districts, and a constrained supply of new mixed income rental housing.
For a North Penn household already in a unit, the biggest pressure is renewal time. In a market where regional rent indexes are rising faster than the overall CPI, a five percent increase on a 1,600 dollar rent adds nearly 1,000 dollars per year to the household budget. If income growth has been modest or uneven, that can mean trimming other essentials.
Households moving into the area, or trading up from a smaller unit, face a slightly different problem. They may end up signing leases mid month or juggling overlapping move in and move out dates. In those cases, using a simple tool such as a prorated rent calculator can at least provide clarity about what is being charged for partial months and help renters compare offers from different landlords on an apples to apples basis.
For those who own property in North Penn, rising rents look tempting as an income opportunity, but the math is not automatic. Mortgage costs, insurance, taxes, maintenance, and potential vacancies all eat into the headline rent number. Prospective small landlords can use an online rental property calculator to translate list rents and estimated expenses into cash flow and return figures before deciding whether to enter the market.
The data suggest a nuanced answer.
Rents in the area, as captured by median gross rent measures and regional CPI, are relatively high and have been rising faster than the overall price level. Local incomes are also high compared with the state and national averages, which keeps the countywide share of cost burdened households lower than the national renter average.
At the same time, more than a quarter of Montgomery County households are already spending at least 30 percent of their income on housing, and planning documents acknowledge a shortage of new, genuinely affordable rental options. In a built out school district area like North Penn, where little new housing has been added and vacancy is low, that combination is likely to keep affordability pressures in place, especially for renters who earn less than the county median.
In short, North Penn’s rental market is not uniformly unaffordable, but it is unforgiving. For higher income households, rents remain manageable, though they claim a growing share of the budget. For lower and moderate income renters, especially those trying to move into the district or stay near schools and jobs, the numbers are already tight and will stay that way unless the local supply of modestly priced rental housing grows faster than it has over the past decade.
