What salary do you need to live in Janesville, WI?

The cost side of living in Janesville

Renters in Janesville pay a median $1,068 a month for two bedrooms. Size matters: one bedroom is $807, three bedrooms $1,261, so going from the smallest to the largest of the three adds $5,448 a year.

Homeowners in Janesville report a median home value of $231,600. Against a median household income of $75,673, the ratio is 3.1× — one of the gentler home-price-to-income ratios in the country.

The Regional Price Parity, BEA's index of local prices with the US at 100, is 93.7 here. Below 100 means a paycheck stretches further: $100,000 in Janesville has the buying power of roughly $106,720 at national average prices.

Income needed for each grade in Janesville

With a two-bedroom at the median rent, the score enters Tight at $30,000, Okay at $60,000 and Comfortable at $121,000 a year before tax. At the Comfortable line, a year of rent takes 11% of income and the median home is 1.9× income.

Royal, the top band, starts at $355,000. At that income rent is 4% of pay and the median home 0.7× income.

How they were found: the same scoring function the calculator runs was evaluated at rising incomes until each cutoff was crossed, and the crossing rounded up to a whole $1,000.

Four salaries, three home sizes in Janesville

Choosing a bigger place in Janesville at $75,000 trims the score from 56 to 49 without leaving Okay.

Read down the two-bedroom column and the first Comfortable row is $150,000, consistent with the $121,000 line above.

Janesville on the national list

On price level Janesville is 189th of 387 (1 = most expensive); on two-bedroom rent it is 242nd, and on median home value 241st. The two rankings agree, both falling near the middle.

Next to Janesville on the national rent ranking: Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC ($1,069) and Amarillo, TX ($1,066).

Janesville in a Wisconsin context

Statewide, Wisconsin's median two-bedroom rent is $1,106 and its median home value $266,500. Janesville's rent is −3% against that, and its home value −13%; the price parity is 93.7 versus 94.1 for the state.

Scored the same way, the statewide figures turn Comfortable at $133,000, so Janesville needs $12,000 less than Wisconsin overall.

Looking for somewhere comparable without leaving Wisconsin? Eau Claire, WI, Appleton, WI, and Green Bay, WI have the closest mix of rent and overall prices.

The median Janesville household

The median household in the metro earns $75,673 (ACS 2020-2024). Run through the calculator with two bedrooms, that scores 52, Okay. Put differently, Janesville's typical household is $45,327 below the $121,000 it takes to read Comfortable on two bedrooms. For Wisconsin as a whole, the median household income of $77,485 scores 50 against statewide rents. A household figure may pool several earners, unlike a single salary.

Treat every number here as a pre-tax, public-data estimate rather than financial advice.