It’s common for renters to deal with a host of different price metrics when searching for an apartment. Owners, agencies, sub-tenants offer weekly, monthly, bi-weekly and sometimes even daily rental prices. This is confused with the fact that rents can be charged based on different time periods, such as monthly (per calendar month) or every 4 weeks.

It’s easy to get confused by the numbers in the headlines. For example, $300 weekly rent is NOT equal to $1200 monthly rent. The monthly rent is not simply multiplying the weekly rent by four. This is because each month has a different number of days, and that must be taken into account.

Therefore, tenants should always be able to convert weekly rent to monthly (per calendar month) and vice versa. This article shows you how to create your own calculator to achieve this.

First, we calculate your weekly rent by calendar month rent (PCM). For argument’s sake, let’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 there are 52 weeks in a year, we divide $8,400 by 52 to get our weekly rent. Let $8,400/52 = $161.53.

Conversely, to calculate the monthly rent from the week, we first multiply the weekly rent by 4, then a third of a week’s rent. So, for example, if my weekly rent is $120, then to calculate my monthly rent 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 necessary, for example, if you need to figure out your ‘prorated rent’ when you move into an apartment in the middle of the month and need to figure out how much to pay for that month until you start paying monthly.

To do this, multiply your monthly income by 12 to calculate your annual income. Then, divide your annual income by 365 to arrive at your daily income, since there are always 365 days in a year. Next, calculate how many days you will live in the apartment until the start date of your monthly lease. For example, if the lease started on July 20 and rent is due on the 1st of the 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 due.

So if the monthly rent is $600, my annual rent will be $600 x 12 = $7,200 and my daily rent will be $19.72. The amount to be paid in the first month of the lease will then be $19.72 x 11 = $216.99.

We hope that the rental calculator described above will overcome the pain and complexities of apartment hunting, and we hope you find the apartment of your dreams.