Denver is one of only five major metro areas where both rents and monthly mortgage payments now take a bigger bite out of incomes than they did in the years before the housing bubble, according to a new study from residential real estate website Zillow.

Someone in metro Denver earning the median income can now expect to devote 35 percent of pay to cover the rent on a typical rental property, according to Zillow’s analysis.

That contrasts with an average rent burden of 23.4 percent in Denver between 1985 and 2000 and a current U.S. rent burden of 30.2 percent.

“Our research found that unaffordable rents are making it hard for people to save for a down payment and retirement, and that people whose rent is unaffordable are more likely to skip out on their own health care,” noted Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell.

Rent burdens are rising above historical averages in many U.S. cities, and Denver renters aren’t necessarily the most burdened. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, for example, rents consume more than 46 percent of median incomes.

What sets Denver apart is how sharply home prices are moving up. Denver ranked first among major metros for year-over-year home price appreciation, 15.4 percent, and second-quarter-over-first-quarter appreciation at 4.5 percent. Metro Denver’s average hourly wage, by contrast, rose only 0.6 percent over that same period.

A metro Denver buyer earning the median income purchasing the median-priced home with 20 percent down and borrowing the rest at current rates on a 30-year mortgage can expect the mortgage to eat up 21.1 percent of their pay. In Denver, the area median income is $56,000.

That is just a tad over the 21 percent share of income averaged on mortgage payments from 1985 to 2000. That may not seem like a big deal, but across the U.S., mortgage payments on the median house consume 15.1 percent of the median income.

That share is also high given how low mortgage rates are right now. If rates on a 30-year mortgage return to 6 percent, that mortgage burden would rise to 28.1 percent in metro Denver holding everything else constant.

Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/aldosvaldi

The other four cities

The other four other cities, all in California, where both the rent and mortgage burdens are now above pre-bubble historical averages: E San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.