Opinion of this article from the NYT property section

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is that per month?

[Simfan34]

Is that per month?

Yes?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You Americans can be weird, so I thought it made sense to check.

I don't see how just under $3,000 a month for rent is cheap. On what planet is that cheap.

[Simfan34]

You Americans can be weird, so I thought it made sense to check.

I don't see how just under $3,000 a month for rent is cheap. On what planet is that cheap.

Surely it's worse down there?

I mean, here, relative to the other places on the list...

[bedstuy]

I live in a 2-bed and pay about $1800, but this is University housing so it's obviously a bit... different. I mean it's easy to get reliable rent statistics from a site like Streeteasy, which shows you the average rates on what's on the market now. So the median rent for a listed 1-bedroom (excluding the one brand new building in Morningside otherwise the price jumps to $3,680) is...

$1,718 in Bed-Stuy
$2,500 in Morningside Heights
$2,800 in the UES (hey, there was an article in the Times the other day about how cheap the UES was)
$2,950 in Williamsburg
$3,175 in SoHo
$3,200 in the UWS
$3,450 in Lenox Hill
$3,600 in the West Village
$3,695 in the UES west of 3rd Ave (aka the Real UES)
$3,950 in Greenwich Village
$4,400 in Tribeca

So I think this settles things.

Not really though.  A lot of rentals are not commercially listed with a broker in a way that StreetEasy is going to be able to access.  Those rentals that are commercially listed with a broker include everything high priced. 

Just as an example, I pay $1000 for a one bedroom in Bed-Stuy and my apartment has never been listed with a broker so it will never be counted by most surveys of average rents.

[Хahar 🤔]

According to the 2011 American Community Survey estimates, which seem to be the latest Census Bureau data available on this topic, median gross rents are:

San Francisco - $1,407
New York County (i.e. Manhattan) - $1,403
Washington, DC - $1,216
New York City as a whole - $1,168

It's a good thing that people in this thread are making the reasonable comparison of San Francisco to Manhattan and not the absurd comparison of San Francisco to New York. train makes a salient point about rent control; I know a number of people living in San Francisco on far less money than one might expect, but for a new arrival the only remotely reasonable place in terms of housing is out in the Sunset, which is far from everything and in terms of weather is basically Alaska.

[angus]

On what planet is that cheap.

On Planet Houston, as they say in Superman, it certainly is not cheap.

At some point you'll have to accept the fact that these New Yorkers will not surrender.  They simply cannot buy into the idea that most humanoids will cringe at the idea of spending any more than about a quarter of your net income on rent.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean, here, relative to the other places on the list...

The word 'cheap' was used. This is absurd enough as to count as an egregious abuse of the language.

[Simfan34]

I was thinking about that. So you're telling me there's a world of (quality) apartments that I don't know about?

Al, rent cannot usually exceed 30% of income, so a $4,400/rent would translate into a $176,000 after tax income, which works out to be something like $290,750 pre-tax.

It is ludicrous, yes. But we must live with it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...

[King]

Morningside Park (where you can still get mugged in broad daylight)

lolno

Some guys offer me a hit from the joint they were smoking while walking through the park once though.

To Simfan, being offered a joint is getting mugged in spirit.

[traininthedistance]

On what planet is that cheap.

On Planet Houston, as they say in Superman, it certainly is not cheap.

At some point you'll have to accept the fact that these New Yorkers will not surrender.  They simply cannot buy into the idea that most humanoids will cringe at the idea of spending any more than about a quarter of your net income on rent.

Uh, pretty sure most New Yorkers cringe at that idea too.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Fireplaces are amazing and you can never have too many of them.

It took a while for me to adjust to the concept of the fireplace.  As far as I was concerned they just took up valuable wallspace and floorspace, and provided a dangerous place for someone to bump his head or scrape a knee.  A small child or drunk father could get hurt on all those bricks and mantlework.  That's actually what I liked least about the last house we bought.  It had a fireplace.  We tried so hard to find a house we liked without one, but couldn't.  Well, we could find houses without one, but none we liked.  In the end we accepted the fact that they're always there.

Ours is cheesy, too.  It has this little sculpture that is made to look like burning wood, but it isn't actually burning wood, and you don't actually light anything.  Basically, there's a switch on the wall beside the fireplace.  It looks like a lightswitch.  Flip it and suddenly there's a raging fire.  

It's actually useful, though, when we have heavy snow days and my son and I go out and build snowmen and have snowball fights and go on the toboggan and come in soaking wet.

Yeah, I don't really care for fireplaces either, but as I've discovered in my recent househunting, they are pretty much ubiquitous once you get past a certain price point.  I have however made a point of rejecting houses with wood-burning fireplaces since I don't plan on keeping firewood around and it's a way to whittle down the list of places to look at.

[Adam Griffin]

New money, I presume?

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

On what planet is that cheap.

On Planet Houston, as they say in Superman, it certainly is not cheap.

At some point you'll have to accept the fact that these New Yorkers will not surrender.  They simply cannot buy into the idea that most humanoids will cringe at the idea of spending any more than about a quarter of your net income on rent.

Uh, pretty sure most New Yorkers cringe at that idea too.

Then why don't they move elsewhere?

[MaxQue]

On what planet is that cheap.

On Planet Houston, as they say in Superman, it certainly is not cheap.

At some point you'll have to accept the fact that these New Yorkers will not surrender.  They simply cannot buy into the idea that most humanoids will cringe at the idea of spending any more than about a quarter of your net income on rent.

Uh, pretty sure most New Yorkers cringe at that idea too.

Then why don't they move elsewhere?

That is meaning moving (far of friends and often family) and find another job (or do a long commute). They don't like expensive rent (who does?!), but they may like even less the alternatives.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I lived very near a subway line, a few blocks from the 116th street station of line 1, and it wasn't too terribly far the other way from the A/C line, and that may have affected the rent, but it certainly wasn't in one of the more posh neighborhoods.  Also, you mention factoring in transit costs.  I hadn't even mentioned what it cost to park my car.  I had to go way out to Brooklyn and let a guy bury my car, agreeing to give him a day's notice if I needed it, just to get my parking costs under $150 per month.

Two things:

A) I don't know when you lived in NYC, but that certainly sounds like you were getting screwed over.  1-bedroom apartments in Morningside Heights look like they go for a little over 2K now, not 3K, and I'm pretty sure that's higher than it was back whenever you were there.

http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/5176_nh/

B)  What the hell were you doing trying to keep a car in Manahattan?    The whole point of that island is that you (or, at least, the vast majority of residents) don't need one of those things to get around.  The majority of NYC households don't own a car, and that number is even higher in Manhattan.  Obviously if we're discussing transportation costs we are addressing that reality instead.

I can only conclude your experience was incredibly atypical, and shouldn't be generalized to the cost of living in NYC as a whole.

To be fair, those one-bedrooms renting at $2k a month in Morningside Heights are actually in Harlem.

But, again, this is about trade-offs.  New Yorkers give up some material comfort for an urban lifestyle.  Material comfort is overrated if you ask me.  That's sort of the folly of the American lifestyle.  People assume they need a car, central air conditioning, 1000 sq. ft of living space per person and tons of extra money to buy toys.  At some point, life becomes more about the constraints that your possessions require of you and not about people.  

Plus, there is some extra value to the concentration of people and wealth in NYC.  If you live in Arizona, you'll have more money to go to restaurants on the same salary.  But, there aren't any great restaurants in Arizona.  So, you're not necessarily getting real value for your money.  It's the same with housing.  NYC has better housing stock than the rest of America, in general and you get what you pay for to an extent.

While you make some good points, I'm just going to play devil's advocate here and say that most families with children (ie the non-rich families with children) aren't going to choose to live in Manhattan or San Francisco. Kids are expensive, and affordability of housing plus safety become very important to families as a result.

[bedstuy]

I lived very near a subway line, a few blocks from the 116th street station of line 1, and it wasn't too terribly far the other way from the A/C line, and that may have affected the rent, but it certainly wasn't in one of the more posh neighborhoods.  Also, you mention factoring in transit costs.  I hadn't even mentioned what it cost to park my car.  I had to go way out to Brooklyn and let a guy bury my car, agreeing to give him a day's notice if I needed it, just to get my parking costs under $150 per month.

Two things:

A) I don't know when you lived in NYC, but that certainly sounds like you were getting screwed over.  1-bedroom apartments in Morningside Heights look like they go for a little over 2K now, not 3K, and I'm pretty sure that's higher than it was back whenever you were there.

http://www.trulia.com/for_rent/5176_nh/

B)  What the hell were you doing trying to keep a car in Manahattan?    The whole point of that island is that you (or, at least, the vast majority of residents) don't need one of those things to get around.  The majority of NYC households don't own a car, and that number is even higher in Manhattan.  Obviously if we're discussing transportation costs we are addressing that reality instead.

I can only conclude your experience was incredibly atypical, and shouldn't be generalized to the cost of living in NYC as a whole.

To be fair, those one-bedrooms renting at $2k a month in Morningside Heights are actually in Harlem.

But, again, this is about trade-offs.  New Yorkers give up some material comfort for an urban lifestyle.  Material comfort is overrated if you ask me.  That's sort of the folly of the American lifestyle.  People assume they need a car, central air conditioning, 1000 sq. ft of living space per person and tons of extra money to buy toys.  At some point, life becomes more about the constraints that your possessions require of you and not about people.  

Plus, there is some extra value to the concentration of people and wealth in NYC.  If you live in Arizona, you'll have more money to go to restaurants on the same salary.  But, there aren't any great restaurants in Arizona.  So, you're not necessarily getting real value for your money.  It's the same with housing.  NYC has better housing stock than the rest of America, in general and you get what you pay for to an extent.

While you make some good points, I'm just going to play devil's advocate here and say that most families with children (ie the non-rich families with children) aren't going to choose to live in Manhattan or San Francisco. Kids are expensive, and affordability of housing plus safety become very important to families as a result.

I guess that's true to an extent now.  I know people who raised 5 kids on a lower middle class salary in Manhattan back in the day and I have a relative who is raising young kids in Manhattan right now on a teacher's salary.  It's gotten harder with the price of real estate going nuts, but it's still not impossible.  It's also not like Manhattan is super dangerous.  It's way safer in terms of crime than where I grew up and many, many large cities in America.

Also, we have to clarify that we're talking about white people.  I do a lot of volunteer work with single mothers in Brooklyn and I meet 20 year olds who are raising 3 kids.

[traininthedistance]

On what planet is that cheap.

On Planet Houston, as they say in Superman, it certainly is not cheap.

At some point you'll have to accept the fact that these New Yorkers will not surrender.  They simply cannot buy into the idea that most humanoids will cringe at the idea of spending any more than about a quarter of your net income on rent.

Uh, pretty sure most New Yorkers cringe at that idea too.

Then why don't they move elsewhere?

Variously: a) some are indeed rich enough to afford these eye-bleeding rents; b) some go further afield within the city, to hunt for something within budget; c) some will cringe but pay anyway, for any number of reasons.

It's worth noting that average salaries are higher here, too; you'll get paid more for doing the same work in NYC than you would for doing it in many other places, and some of that premium will get eaten up by housing.  My GF (who I will only say does not work a particularly glamorous or high-paying job) briefly considered trying to look for things in Philadelphia before I moved up to live with her, and found that equivalent positions to what she had or might be looking for frequently paid 20-25% less.  With numbers like that, her [income - taxes - housing/transpo] number was better in NYC than in Philly, even if percentage-wise she'd pay more for housing in NYC.

[traininthedistance]

Another piece of anecdata to add to the bonfire: an NYC-living acquaintance of mine just found a 1BR for $650/month.

Where?  In Bensonhurst- which is obviously rather far from Manhattan, but, y'know, it's on the subway and it's not the "ghetto". 

[Simfan34]

Another piece of anecdata to add to the bonfire: an NYC-living acquaintance of mine just found a 1BR for $650/month.

Where?  In Bensonhurst- which is obviously rather far from Manhattan, but, y'know, it's on the subway and it's not the "ghetto". 

Two things. Anecdata. I like that word. Second, I will be forever in awe of our old city planners for laying track in such far-flung places. Of course now we have to spend $11 billion (a 250% overrun)  to build a simple rail tunnel that will take 17 years (or 53, depending on how you count it) to build. Or the Second Avenue Subway, which needs no explanation.

As for the article I didn't actually realise the house was in the UES. It's quite elegant. I would like to live there, but I'd never be able to afford it unless...

But anyway. I continue to maintain Hamilton Heights will be the next big thing, if a bit far from the subway. I mean just look at it: