> In 2011, while primarily working on pandas, I was paying $2000 per month for a ground-level "1 bedroom" apartment in the East Village. It was less than 500 square feet and had none of the above amenities.
You know, you can always tell when a non-native New Yorker lives in New York, because they all choose one of five neighborhoods to live in, and then complain about their poor living conditions.
My guy, you can live in one of the other boroughs, have an average commute to work, and have good living conditions that satisfy at least half of your list of requirements there for $2000 in 2011.
Like other commentators here have said, people of a certain class (and age) want to have their cake and eat it too.
I guess you could get a slightly larger apartment in Sunset Park or Jackson Heights or somewhere but you would still be paying a preposterous $2000 (realistically $2500+ in 2018) for that, and now you've added NYC's cramped, unpleasant, "state of emergency" transportation infrastructure to your daily grind. For all that you get housing that is _still_ laughably austere in comparison to what you'd get nearly anywhere else in the country.
For what it's worth, I lived 7 or 8 places in about two years when I lived in NYC, in pretty much every Brooklyn neighborhood within a 20-40 minute radius from where I worked. Saved lots of money too - never lived alone, did social stuff in my neighborhood, took full advantage of the City to the best of my ability. After all that, I came to the following verdict: NYC is stupidly overpriced and has a substantial quality of life problem.
I am admittedly a non-native, so perhaps some of the finer charms of the City will always be lost on me. But I don't know - I'm living in Berlin right now, which isn't _too_ drastically different, and can't say I find myself missing NYC at all.
I lived in Sunset Park for years. My 2600 square foot house on 10 acres of land has the same combined payment for mortgage+tax as my apartment from ~10 years ago and that neighborhood was worse then than it is now.
My washer and dryer are enormous, I have a car, and I live 5 minutes from the interstate on a beautiful wooded property with faster internet than I ever had in New York.
I am originally from NYC and I think the time to buy a house there was around the 1980s. If you have no hope of affording a good property there now in 2018, you have no business living in NYC because you are on the wrong side of the trade there. All of your surplus is going to be captured by the hyper successful alliance of landlords and the government. Renters are just asking to be tag team bodyslammed. Every time you get a raise, your landlord also will give himself a raise.
I recommend looking west -- there are $2k 1BRs in Jersey City and Hoboken with 35-minute door-to-door commutes to most tech companies in Manhattan. Many even with central air, dishwasher, and in-unit laundry! PATH's reliability numbers are better than any subway line, and in case of issues there's bus, ferry, NJT rail as alternatives. And best of all, no NYC city income tax.
I would actually recommend to most folks the slightly less commuter friendly areas west -- namely the Fort Lee, Palisades Park area and down to Edgewater. Especially if you can bike or motorbike or pay for the ferry.
That's exactly where I would move to if I had to leave my place in midtown.
I would like to suggest that there are other parts of NYC to live, in addition to what evanelias mentions above.
Many who complain about high rents, and feeling poor, for reasons I do not entirely understand, have a stigma of living in the other boroughs other than Manhattan.
In Queens, in a well connected (express subway line) area, one can get the same 400 sqft "dump" the author cites, for less than 1000$. And commute-wise, about 30 minutes to midtown.
Having lived both in Queens and Manhattan over many years, I find this "Manhattan or broke" attitude with largely people who move from outside NYC.
I moved to Manhattan from Queens, when I was able to afford it and not when it became affordable.
However, PATH is meandering near the border of MTA's hellish confines and looks drunk enough to stumble in. Couple that with the incessant development (there are 4 towers in constructions near Paulus hook) and already stressed PATH infra and you can guess what can happen next.
On the whole, JC is better than BK for a myriad of reasons.
PATH's infrastructure is mechanically sound and improving. I would not be concerned about it following in the MTA's tracks in the signal delay/equipment failure sense.
Overcrowding is certainly an issue and while I know there are some capacity improvements in progress (CBTC signaling, more cars), I have never seen a clear timeline from the PA as to when more capacity will actually happen.
It's not tongue-in-cheek. This is a real issue in NYC, less so the further out you go in the boroughs. To break it down further:
* Dishwasher is much more common these days.
* In-unit laundry: Sometimes you'll find an in-unit washer, but no dryer. If there is an in-unit dryer, you have to ask whether it's a 110V electric or a true 220V vented. If it's the former, lower end models can take up to 4 hours to dry a small load. We had an in-unit washer, but just hung our clothes to dry and saved money instead of buying an in-unit dryer. Often times, you'll have no washer or dryer and simply take your laundry to a neighborhood coin-operated laundromat. If you're lucky, you might have coin-operated laundry facilities in the building.
* Central air is still a rarity. Most of the older housing (i.e. apartment) stock use radiator heating and window AC units.
This entire thread is specifically about the NYC metro area. My reply was about Jersey City and Hoboken, which are directly across the river from Manhattan. The apartments I'm describing are literally only 1 to 3 miles from Manhattan, hence the short commutes I also mentioned. I really don't see why my reply would be interpreted as tongue-in-cheek.
Cars can be moved around (that’s pretty much the whole point of them) so their prices tend to be pretty similar in different areas. Housing can’t move so the price can vary enormously from place to place. This shouldn’t be a surprise at all.
People with teenager-level jobs outside of NYC can afford the kinds of basic appliances that you need a fancy job to get in NYC. New Yorkers are just really numb to it.
Disagree about your $2k take on a Sunset Park or Jackson Heights apartment. I've lived in the latter, and that's not the case.
Your "daily grind" doesn't have to happen at the same time as everyone else's. If the cramped subway bothers you, commute before (almost everyone can do this) or after (maybe not everyone can do this one though) the on-peak hours.
NYC is an expensive and densely populated city to live in. Your quality of life hinges on the set of compromises you make, which are unique to the city and have a higher impact on your day-to-day. Some people don't like to make compromises and decisions that affect their everyday lives to this degree, and that's fine. But to pretend that options don't exist is ridiculous.
The subway might be less cramped at off-peak times, but it's not more reliable or faster. It's still a long commute that's been getting longer and less predictable for the past ~2 years.
I live in Hell's Kitchen but I had a reverse commute to Sunset Park for 2 years, ending earlier this year.
My commute time ranged anywhere from 50 minutes to 2 and a half hours, each way, every day...more often towards the latter end of that spectrum. The situation of riding the yellow line to/from Brooklyn is atrocious and not something that I plan to subject myself to again.
In 2011, I rented a 2-bedroom apartment next to the beautiful Prospect park, within a trivial walking distance to 2 subway lines, 30 mins by train to my office in Manhattan, for $1500.
Depends on what you need in life. Some need night life, some need good schools, some need short commute, some need a park to walk / run, etc. Some even prefer Nashville.
I defy you to find a 2 bedroom apartment in a non-crappy neighborhood in any major American city for less than $1k. Even smaller cities won’t make that cut - it’s tough to find that in Columbus, let alone Denver or Dallas.
You can always trade off commute time or access to jobs and culture for lower rent. It’s pointless to complain about more desirable cities being more expensive; if you want to live in a popular area it’s going to cost you more.
Goalposts are moving quickly. $1500 in 2011 is closer to $1800-2000 in 2018. And where did under $1k come from?
I own a newer construction 2Br condo in midtown Atlanta with a 24-hour doorman, pool, dedicated parking, and skyline views and my monthly payment including HOA is about $1300. Brand new 2Br apartments in the building next door start around $1700. Just some more anecdata.
No they aren’t. I’m putting a baseline on hyperbole: at $1000 today, you’d be close to the bottom of the market for a 2 bedroom apartment in any desirable market in the US. The OP paid (in 2018 dollars) only twice the minimum, in a fairly desirable part of one of the economic, cultural and business capitals of the world.
Basically, you have ridiculous standards if you think Prospect Park is crappy, and your price expectations are irrational. Even you admit that your next-door neighbors will be getting roughly the same deal...but they’ll be in Atlanta, not NYC. It’s fine if you don’t like NYC, but you seem to have trouble accepting that a great many people do like it enough to pay more for it.
Also, let’s talk about moving the goalposts: you’re comparing ownership and renting as if they’re the same thing.
I just took a 2-week vacation in Bavaria, and indeed, the rampant smoking was shocking to me as an American. However, I did not see it inside, only outside. It was especially annoying when I wanted to look at a restaurant's menu outside and some idiot with a cigarette was standing in the doorway; I just went by and found another restaurant when that happened. I saw tons of people (usually male) smoking outside right next to doorways, in entranceways, on the sidewalks, etc., many times in the rain and cold. The level of cigarette smoking, plus the poor city air quality due to all the diesel cars, really made me question if I could stand living in Germany any time in the next 20 years (probably about as long as it'll take to become more like America now).
However, I did not once see anyone smoking indoors, and it seemed to be illegal in public places from what I could tell. Are things different in Berlin?
It's illegal in Berlin as well but completely unenforced in bars and clubs. Also in general the smoking population of adults is like 1/3 of men and 1/4 of women. I'm an occasional smoker and I even find it disgusting.
I was in Berlin exactly a year ago, and it is indeed unberable. Think bars so filled with smoke you can't see all the way across the room. Smoking outside just wasn't a thing, and it was in the 30s when I was there, so while there is in general a good outdoor drinking culture where you can avoid it for much of the year, in the winter you just can't.
I had to leave some places because it was so unbearable.
Probably not then? Restaurants were fine. I am not sure where the line is drawn between a bar and restaurant though, but you can likely see or smell the smoke long before you enter a place, so it shouldn't be hard to avoid.
I live in Sunset Park now and pay $2000 for a two bedroom apartment, though the second bedroom fits only a twin sized bed. It was mostly a bonus room and use it for storage.
My previous Sunset Park apartment, of just one bedroom, raised its rent to over $2000 before I moved out. Sunset Park, unless you live close to 8th Avenue, is not even that nice or quiet of a neighborhood to live in.
Because Sunset Park has a) high home ownership rates and b) tons of apartment exclusive to the Chinese community, it's actually not a very cheap place to live in. Or perhaps that's just how expensive NYC is now.
I've chosen to move to a nicer neighborhood next year because if I'm going to pay $2000-2400 I'd rather live closer to Manhattan, even if the apartment is smaller.
This. NYC is more than just Manhattan. My two children, my wife and I live in a 3 BR apt, with backyard access and laundry in the basement, in Ridgewood, Queens for 1750 a month. Its 30 minutes to Union Sq. by subway and 40 minutes by bicycle. I am amazed when new college grads at my job tell me they are renting a room in Manhattan for how much I am paying for a full floor apartment in Queens.
Some things never change. The absolute amount would be different but otherwise you could cut and paste the exact same comment to Usenet in the mid 1980s and it wouldn't look at all out of place.
Shh, don't spoil Ridgewood! When people find out they can get a whole house with a yard for the price they pay for a room in Williamsburg we'll get overrun.
No one paying for a room in Williamsburg (or most of the other high costs neighborhoods) wants a "full house and a yard". I really don't understand the American obsession with huge living spaces. Just increases the amount you have to clean, and the amount of junk you're liable to fill it with.
The best argument is for kids, but for me and many (most) of my peers at least, that's the last thing we want. I'd also argue that raising children in the South/MidWest does them a great disservice in terms of cut potential in education and career prospects but that's neither here nor there.
The space is more about supporting a variety of hobbies that require space and/or the space is available at minimal cost likely both in time & money.
With my tech friends, they seem to be able to live ridiculously minimally as their life outside of the essentials fits into a laptop/desktop. My non-tech friends are less so.
Some activities that like having more space are as follows. Sure, most on this list are available via affordable to semi-luxurious subscriptions and/or coops or definitely can be done in a small space, yet having a personal version of it or additional space offers a decent QoL improvement in the form of time saved, or simply not having to share space/equipment with family/strangers.
- Gym Equipments (powerrack, barbells, etc)
- Sauna
- Gardening
- Music (neighbors don't complain about your noise)
- Crafts
- Wood/Metal working
- Cooking/Baking
- Pets
- Art Studio (ceramics, painting, drawing, etc)
- Automotive
A bunch of these tend to also be activities/skills that some people derive a large part of their identity & happiness from, thus giving that up for living in a small space sounds like a preposterous suggestion to them.
I also hope the author was joking about being part of the underclass--which I'm willing to give them a charitable interpretation because of the quotes.
The mere fact that they can afford to live in a 1-bedroom in the EV is, well, evidence against that fact. You're not even part of the underclass in Manhattan if you can do that.
But that's exactly what I take issue with - you're not! Someone's delivering your food, someone's working at the bodega you go to. You won't encounter nearly the same level of homelessness as you do in SF, but you will encounter homeless people regularly nonetheless. You run into the actual underclass far more often than you encounter the extremely wealthy.
If you call yourself part of the underclass, either you're: Forgetting that they exist, or you're pretending that your economic situation is somehow roughly equivalent. I don't think you need to keep that on your mind every single second of the day, but at least be honest about it.
You are much closer to your deliveryman than to fat cats making multi-million dollar salaries on Wall Street. That's the comparison the Author was making.
I assumed it to be a joke, or at least referencing that a person with a "white-collar" job in NYC at times feels like they live more like the middle/lower class than the upper-class.
For instance, New York City made significant efforts to include a large number of affordable housing in many recent developments. People within a certain income range(30-100k ish) can apply for these apartments at a significantly reduced rent. This allows people who work middle-income jobs to at least live close to work. I'm not arguing the against the merits of these programs as I think income diversity is good, but this combined with the reality that many new developments included mainly luxury units or affordable units without much in-between, causes a significant rent burden for many New Yorkers making 100-200k.
Contrast that to say taking a 15% salary reduction to live in Nashville, that same person now probably lives much more like the upper-class of Nashville than the lower class.
I should point out that this isn't universally the case, there are plenty of people who moved into these areas during a very different era and are protected in the form of rent control, public housing, or simply purchasing during the height of the crack epidemic that did a ton of damage to the east village.
The single place I've lived the longest in my life was a little apartment in "East Williamsburg" (read: Bed-Stuy / Bushwick). I was five stops away from the LES on the JMZ and the L and my rent barely notched up annually. Back when I worked around Wall Street, it was 30-minutes door-to-door, and if hanging out in Manhattan during the summer I'd sometimes walk home from anywhere below 23rd street.
When I first got that apartment in 2001, my rent was $900 and when I finally left after 11 years, my rent was $1,350. I loved that little apartment, the neighborhood - which has barely changed since, and my neighbors. I was truly sad to leave it.
I've been trying to convince other friends who moved to NYC to stop complaining about rent and join the common folk in the other boroughs, some of whom never left Manhattan except to head to and from the airport. I can't imagine what NYC looks like from that perspective, but I'm positive it's a lesser view.
This is the first comment I've read in this thread from someone who actually "figured it out". It's not rocket science: move out of Manhattan, ride a bike, learn to cook, enjoy the finer parts of NYC.
Yes! This person was living in East Village, which is probably the most happening/hip neighborhood in Manhattan. Tons of bars, restaurants, theaters, other young people. Neighborhoods in upper Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Jersey City have easy access to the city (30-45 min train rides) and cost less.
I don't think it makes sense to live in New York unless there is something you can only get here. There's only one MoMA, one City Ballet, one Film Forum. (Not to mention the business and professional opportunities - the city is a business city first and foremost.)
The difference between 45 minutes (+60 mins/-5 mins) on the unreliable subway and a 15 minute walk / bike ride / UberPool / etc cannot be overstated. That's 250 hours per year, not to mention the stress and hassles of being reliant on the ever-spiraling subway.
As with anything else, there are compromises to be made, and NYC has a unique set of them. If you really think this way, go ahead and live in a densely populated neighborhood with the compromises that come along with it.
For what it's worth, I commute before/after on-peak hours to avoid delays. The subway is very efficient at 7am-7:30am, and is a shitshow at 9am when everyone is trying to get to their 10am start job. Then everyone complains about the delays, as if they can't make changes to their schedule when they _know_ it's a shitshow at certain times.
You can get things done on a train that you can't if you need to focus on walking or biking. By the time I arrive at work I've gotten through my emails and read the days headlines.
Similarly, I've taken to using UberPool during winter because, while it's a little slower, it gives me back 1-1.5 hours per day of productive time, for a marginal cost of $2-3 beyond the subway cost.
The issue for me is the "average commute to work". I need to be on the 6 (or 4/5). Anywhere outside of Manhattan makes my commute ~1 hour instead of ~35 min. I don't currently live in the EV, but I'd entertain doing so if I could get a bit more for the money.
Crown Heights close to Nostrand to Grand Central should take you 30-45min, and you can have a semi-luxury building or renovated apartment for the same price as the author of the article posted. There are other similar neighborhoods in BK. UES or East Harlem could work too.
If you don't mind a bit of grungy asthetics, the areas near the JMZ trains just on the other side of Manhattan in Williamsburg and the Bed Stuy/Bushwick border have a relatively fast commute - much faster than far more expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
For example, it's like 10m from Marcy Ave to Essex St. in the LES. The J goes downtown in the Wall St. area while the M takes much of the same path as the F along 6th Ave, and both of those trains follow the same lines up until Myrtle-Broadway. In fact, it's literally two stops from Essex St. during rush hour as the J runs express (sometimes it sees itself as a Z).
I live in Brooklyn, east of Prospect Park, and am on the 5. I can also take the Q/B which are express to Manhattan and switch to the 6 or 5 at 14th. My commute is to Midtown, and it takes about 35 minutes.
For many years, I lived in Westchester, took metro-north to grand central (30 minutes on an express train), then the 4/5/6 to work (10 minutes. 15 when things were slow).
I looked at this before leaving NYC and the problem is that once you add the time to get to the metro-north station, time to switch from metro north to subway, time from subway to office, and time waiting for trains, elevators, etc, you can easily have a 75-90 minute commute. And that's when things go right on two different transit systems, which seems far too rare these days.
Lately, Grand Central Station has become an overcrowded tourist nightmare where you have to do breathing exercises to stay calm getting from the station to the subway.
I cannot believe they put an Apple store in there. It should be a crime to choose profits over efficiency.
It depends on your preferences, but if you can afford it, my recommendation would be to live in Manhattan (below 100th St) somewhere close-ish to where you work when you first move here, even if that means compromising with a smaller/less nice apartment than you could get in Jersey City or the outer boroughs.
It's hard to find a great apartment if you don't already live in NYC and know what you're looking for, so you'll probably only be in your first apartment for 1 year anyway. Living in Manhattan will give you a central base to explore the city, get to know your transportation options, and make trips to other neighborhoods around the city that you might be interested in moving to. You will also avoid locking yourself into a commute that might be longer/more variable/more miserable than you might originally understand.
At the end of your year in Manhattan, you'll be able to make a more informed choice about whether to stay, or to "upgrade" to a nicer place in Brooklyn, Queens, uptown Manhattan, Jersey City, or even the suburbs.
This is great advice, thank you! Not something that's in the works for the next year or two but long term I think it's a good career move. And I'm close enough (~3-3.5 hour drive) that it's not as huge of a change as moving across the country to SF or something.
Brooklyn (non-Williamsburg) while getting pricier is still afordable. Without kids I'd recommend Clinton Hill area (schools suck there). If with kids, South Slope is a recently gentrified version of pricey Park Slope (where the Mayor lives) which hasn't quite caught up with Park Slope prices yet. There's also a bunch of commuter towns all around NYC in NJ that can guarantee sub-1hour commutes to Midtown where 1 bedroom can be had for 1200 or so with all of the aforementioned amenities.
Yeah, if you're not living next to a PATH train stop or the Secaucus train station, I would assume +30min of travel time to any day's commute. That kind of variance basically means your weekdays are spent going to work, coming home, eating, and going to sleep. Terrible. And you get to pay ever increasing NJ Transit fares and property taxes for it.
So obviously everyone's situation is different. I agree that NJT is a cluster$#% of epic proportions. In my case I'm in Montclair, around 12 minutes from an NJT station but around 1 minute from Decamp Buses which is what I take every day. I take the downtown Wall Street bus a block from my house at 6:50 AM and it drops me off near the bull at 7:50. The bus takes around 25-30 minutes to get to Port Authority and around around 20-30 minutes to traverse to downtown (people request stops). This year it's only been late (i.e. 8:10-8:20) to Downtown twice. One of those times was when major roads in TriBeCa were closed because of mailbomnbs. That's how rare of an occasion that is. Of course that's an early bus, later ones are subject to traffic variations.
I visited a friend of mine when he lived in Astoria ca. 2012-14 or so probably 3 or 4 times, it seemed like a good area and the rent seemed reasonable at the time. He commuted to Columbus Circle and while I never made the trip during rush hour it was not bad at all.
Manhattan is pretty much a unique urban environment in the US. (Chicago probably comes closest.) There are a lot of things to like about it but it really is a city on steroids. Crowds, noise, etc. all take getting used to and, for a lot of people (including myself) more than a week or so of it really gets to be too much.
>Like other commentators here have said, people of a certain class (and age) want to have their cake and eat it too.
a particular shade of cake at that. i lived in bedstuy a couple of years and everything was ridiculously affordable. what's the catch? you have to live around working class people (read: black/hispanic).
So you just ignore the list of things that generally people don't get in Manhattan?
-A dishwasher
-A in-unit washer and dryer. For many NYC-dwellers, having one's own washer and dryer gives the feeling of having "made it".
-A spare bedroom for hosting out-of-town visitors
-Central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
-Enough space to have people over or host dinner parties
-A kitchen area that can fit more than one person
-A comfortable and separate area to work at home
Things that people in almost every "second tier" city get standard for much less than $2000 a month?
Like I said in my comment ("[...] that satisfy at least half of your list of requirements[...]"), I have everything in that list apart from the spare bedroom. I rent a 2BR/2BA and my share of rent is $1750. My roommate pays $1450.
If I were to live by myself, I'd get half of the amenities in that list at $2k. If I were to venture an extra 15mins (by subway) out, I can find a similar place to my current one for $2k/mo that's a 1BR.
Funny how people are tiering up cities. NYC rent should be compared against NYC salaries. Cost of living is still high in NYC, but so are your chances of landing a salary that can let you afford a comfortable lifestyle. Especially in our profession.
I'm ignoring Manhattan, and so should most people that expect suburban comforts, unless if you're living (north of) Harlem.
You know, you can always tell when a non-native New Yorker lives in New York, because they all choose one of five neighborhoods to live in, and then complain about their poor living conditions.
My guy, you can live in one of the other boroughs, have an average commute to work, and have good living conditions that satisfy at least half of your list of requirements there for $2000 in 2011.
Like other commentators here have said, people of a certain class (and age) want to have their cake and eat it too.