Fort Lauderale is among the worst satisfying places to live in terms of rental satisfaction accruing to a recently released Apartment List Renter Confidence Survey. In fact, Fort Lauderdale residents give the city a D grade for overall renters for city satisfaction. That's not great.
Out of 100 cities, Fort Lauderdale ranked 86th, just above places like Detroit, the Bronx, and Baltimore, with places like Philadelphia, Jersey City, and Rochester ranked above it.
The survey, conducted by ApartmentList.com, evaluated 100 cities across the country to figure out where renters were most satisfied, and why.
"City satisfaction was determined by looking at renters' answers to this question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your current city or neighborhood to a friend or family member, with 1 being extremely unlikely and 10 being extremely likely?" Andrew Woo, data scientist at ApartmentList.com tells New Times. "We then compared these results across cities to create our ranking of 100 cities."
Among some of the other metrics renters were survey on were if they felt the city’s economy was on the right track, and how they felt about local crime and safety.
The study surveyed over 18,000 renters and found several key conclusions. For example, renters in Fort Lauderdale were not happy with the lack of access to recreational activities. Moreover, only 23 percent of renters in Fort Lauderdale think the economy is on the right track, according to the survey. Fort Lauderdalians surveyed were mostly perturbed by the time they spent on commuting to work and schools within the city.
Still, renters seemed to give higher grades for things like overall safety and crime rate. Many of those surveyed also said they were expecting to buy a home within the city in the future.
The ApartmentList survey was conducted in seven other Florida cities, including Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando and Hollywood, which all graded better than Fort Lauderdale.
West Palm Beach earned an A- grade, while Jacksonville received a B. Miami and Tampa both earned C grades. Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg both received Ds, with St. Petersburg ranking the worst among all the Florida cities surveyed at 91 out of 100.