LOS ANGELES — The average rent for a 791-square-foot apartment in Los Angeles is about $2,800, according to the apartment search website RentCafe. But what if you only have $1,500 for a place to live?

What You Need To Know

  • Nationally, the average $1,500 monthly rental is 782 square feet

  • None of the cities in the LA metro area have rentals of that size for that money

  • Palmdale offers the most bang for the buck, with $1,500 in rent buying 701 square feet of space

  • Renters in the city of LA get the least amount of apartment space for $1,500 — just 423 square feet

Prepare to downsize or move. That’s the upshot of a new RentCafe analysis that looked at 200 U.S. cities to find out how much space a $1,500 budget would buy.

Nationally, the average rental is 782 square feet for that price point, but none of the cities in the LA metro area have rentals that size for that money.

The best bang for the buck in the LA area is Palmdale, where $1,500 in monthly rent buys 701 square feet of space.

Rounding out the Top 5 are Lancaster (693 square feet), Santa Clarita (598 square feet), Garden Grove (582 square feet) and Pomona (572 square feet).

Renters in the city of Los Angeles get the least amount of apartment space for $1,500 — just 423 square feet.

Other cities that yield less than 500 square feet of apartment space for that price point are Pasadena (430 square feet), Glendale (444 square feet), Irvine (445 square feet), Long Beach (468 square feet) and Huntington Beach (485 square feet).