Renters in Southern California aren’t getting much bang for their buck, according to figures released this week.

Data from apartmentlist.com show that a Pasadena resident with a $1,500-a-month apartment rent is paying an average of $2.44 a square foot for about 610 square feet of space. As bad as that sounds, things are worse in other areas of Southern California.

Very limited space

A renter who pays $1,500 a month in Santa Monica will get an apartment with about 360 square feet of space. That’s about 2.2 times the size of an average parking space or 8 1/2 times as big as a king-sized bed. Malibu isn’t much better at 390 square feet, and in Marina del Rey that $1,500 a month will provide about 430 square feet of space.

J.J. Cruz, 25, who rents a two-bedroom apartment in the 100 block of Harkness Avenue in Pasadena with his wife and daughter, isn’t exactly thrilled with the size of his home. He’s not exactly sure what the square footage is, but he said it’s not enough.

“We’re paying $1,800 a month and I could definitely use more space,” he said. “But this is Southern California … and you know how that goes.”

More space

Other Southland communities offer a more space for $1,500 a month, but they’re still cramped compared to what renters get in other parts of the country.

A Costa Mesa renter who pays $1,500 a month will get about 650 square feet of space. In Long Beach and Torrance, it’s 680 square feet. Other local communities that offer still more space for the money include Santa Ana (720 square feet), Irvine and Orange (740 square feet), Anaheim (780 square feet), Whittier (790 square feet), Santa Clarita (850 square feet), West Covina (870 square feet), Ontario (990 square feet), Rancho Cucamonga (1,020 square feet) and Riverside (1,120 to 1,150 square feet).

In Palmdale, where the per-square-foot price is just $1.05, a renter who pays $1,500 a month will get even more — about 1,420 square feet. But there’s a definite trade-off, as Palmdale is farther away from most major job centers in the greater Los Angeles area.

All of those examples fall short of the kind of space $1,500-a-month renters get in cities such as Akron, Ohio (1,800 to 1,970 square feet), Albany, Georgia (2,450 to 2,540 square feet) and Cameron, North Carolina (2,530 square feet).

Little for the money

It probably comes as no surprise that California ranks high on apartmentlist.com’s ranking of states which offer minimal space for the money renters pay. The average per-square-foot price for a California rental is $2.15, so a $1,500-a-month apartment equates to about 700 square feet of space.

The only other states that offer less for the money are New York (620 square feet), Hawaii (630 square feet) and Massachusetts (650 square feet). At 510 square feet, the District of Columbia is even lower.

Steve Basham, a senior market analyst with CoStar Group Inc., a San Diego-based provider of real estate data, said California’s rental woes are tied to a variety of factors that have conspired to keep rents high for apartments that often provide minimal space.

“It comes back to supply and demand,” he said. “On the supply side of things, it’s very difficult to bring new products to market relative to other parts of the country. We have a tough regulatory environment and lots of community opposition. And when you layer in high construction costs and the shortage of skilled labor … there are a lot of hurdles to bring a project from conception to completion.”

Despite those hurdles, new apartments are being built.

“More than 6,000 units are under construction in downtown Los Angeles and that represents 30 percent of the existing supply of apartments there,” Basham said. ” But there are only about 500 units under construction in Santa Monica and that’s just 2 percent of what’s already there. But you have to look at Santa Monica through a different lens. It’s one of the most expensive submarkets in the region and one of the trendiest ZIP codes in the entire country.”

Equity and aesthetics

Jeni Cross, an associate professor in the Sociology Department at Colorado State University and director of research for the school’s Institute for the Built Environment, said what’s most important to renters are equity and aesthetics.

“We are always comparing ourselves to others,” she said. “If you’re living in 600 square feet of space and find that someone else is getting 1,100 or 1,200 feet of space for about the same amount of rent, that’s upsetting to people. Satisfaction comes down to a variety of aesthetic things, but human beings always do better when they have access to a view and nature.”