It is a common occurrence for renters to be confronted with a plethora of different pricing metrics during an apartment hunt. Landlords, agencies, sub-letters offer rental prices weekly, monthly, fortnightly, and sometimes even daily. This is confounded by the fact that rents can be collected based on different time periods, such as monthly (per calendar month) or every 4 weeks.
It is easy to be confused by the headline figures. For example, $300 weekly rent does NOT equal $1200 monthly rent. The monthly rent is not simply multiplying the weekly rent by four. This is because every month has different number of days within it, and that has to be taken into account.
Therefore, renters will always need to be able to convert weekly to monthly (per calendar month) rent and vice versa. This article shows you how to create your own calculator to achieve this.
First, we calculate weekly rent from you per calendar month (PCM) rent. For argument’s sake that’s say your monthly rent is $700. To calculate your weekly rent, multiply your monthly rent by 12 to calculate your annual rent. 700 x 12 = $8,400. Since we know that there are 52 weeks in a year, we then divide $8,400 by 52 to return our weekly rent. So it is $8,400 / 52 = $161.53.
Conversely, to calculate monthly from weekly rent, we first multiply the weekly by 4, then one-third on one week’s rent. So for example if my weekly rent is $120, then to calculate my monthly it is $120 x 4 = $480 + $40 = $520, since one third of my weekly rent of $120 is $40.
Another scenario is when you need to calculate the daily rent. This is needed for example if you need to work out your ‘prorated rent’ when you move into an apartment in the middle of the month and you need to calculate how much to pay for that month until you start paying monthly.
To do this, multiply your monthly rent by 12 to calculate your annual rent. Then, divide your annual by 365 to arrive at your daily rent, since there is always 365 days in a year. Then, work out how many days you’ll be living in the apartment until the starting date of your monthly lease. For example, if lease began on the 20th of July and rent is collected on the 1st of every month, I will be in the apartment for 11 days in the first month. I will then multiply the number of days by the daily amount owed.
So if monthly rent is $600, my annual will be $600 x 12 = $7200 and my daily rent will be $19.72. The amount payable in the first month of the lease will then be $19.72 x 11 = $216.99.
We hope that the rent calculator outlined above will cut through the pain and complexities of apartment hunting, and we hope you will find your dream apartment.
