For all of the people in this thread saying "some of these aren't that bad" you seriously need to get some perspective.
7-year New Yorker here.
By NYC standards, they aren't that bad. They're unattractive and small, but I've seen a lot worse.
Some of the places that I've had realtors show me make these places look like palaces. When I first got here and was living on close to nothing, I found (on Craigslist) a Williamsburg loft where there'd literally be a shower curtain separating my "room" (which was filthy) from a dark, tenement-like space with ~12 people in it. Kitchen stuff was at least 50 years old and probably didn't work. I visited at 10:00pm on a Thursday and it was loud as hell. $1200 per month. Um, no thanks. (By the way, Williamsburg has the most intense negative energy on earth. Hipsters sound okay in theory but I can't fucking stand them in practice. To give one a job is like pouring salt on a slug, except a good thing in the former case because the whining is entertaining.)
However, I agree with you. If you can get a stream of good jobs out in the Midwest, that is the way to go.
It's honestly not worth the cost of living here for most people. The high rents here are driven by (a) asshole foreign speculators that the government irresponsibly lets into the market, when a 6-months-and-1-day rule is really in order, (b) various legacy rent-control systems that wouldn't be a big deal except in the context of extreme price inelasticity-- I have no problem with the idea of rent control, or even with its continuation for the legitimate beneficiaries; but when upper-middle-class well-connected asswipes buy their way into an arrangement that's superior to ownership, and lock up housing stock, that's wrong, (c) NIMBY like you wouldn't believe, (d) parentally-funded hipster zeros whose guilt-ridden spawners decided they have some entitlement to the "New York Experience" (at $2-6k/month) even though they do absolutely nothing for anyone, (e) the fact that in investment banking and large-firm law, there really are major career benefits to living here (you pretty much need to live in Manhattan to get promoted in soft-side banking; trading is more of a meritocracy where you can live whereever you want as long as you show up on time). If none of these apply, New York is not worth the cost of living here. It is nice, if you take out the cost problem; I just think having savings and, eventually, the freedom with having a nest egg, improves the average person's quality of life by more. (You might guess that I don't intend to be here in 10 years, although I'm very glad I spent the 7 that I have.)
>>>The high rents here are driven by (a) asshole foreign speculators that the government irresponsibly lets into the market, when a 6-months-and-1-day rule is really in order, (b) various legacy rent-control systems that wouldn't be a big deal except in the context of extreme price inelasticity
Um, no. Second-generation life-long New York native here.
These insane prices are driven up by people like you who come here, don't know the proper prices, don't know why the hell we have rent control or what it is and never check to see if you're being ripped off, and so drive everything the hell up. Period.
As of 2011, more than 60% of all apartments in New York are price regulated in some way. Rent stabilization destroys the incentive for developers to maintain and improve properties, and combined with the ridiculous historical preservation laws binds their hands in replacing properties with higher-capacity housing.
That's why most of the housing in Brooklyn and Queens is former tenement housing built god knows how long ago and maintained like crap. Landowners can't easily decide to just tear that shit down and put up mid/high-rises that could house 10x more people and bring down prices.
>>>and put up mid/high-rises that could house 10x more people and bring down prices.
Except rent prices never go down. This is what you outsiders don't freakin understand. Even if you got rid of the rent control and stabilization laws, made it all "free" market, you'd never, ever see a decrease in rents. When people fled post-9/11 and no one was renting, rents did not go down. They side-stepped that by offering one or two or three months of "free" rent, while the registered rent remained in the city's books. Rents never decrease. And never will unless there is some catastrophe that makes the city inhospitable.
First, there is no reason to believe outsiders to NYC have a better or worse grasp of the underlying economics than insiders to NYC.
Prices in NYC do go down. Rents in NYC fell 10-12% during the down turn (and of course 2-3 months of "free" rent is economically indistinguishable from a drop in rents).
Moreover, rents are sticky like most prices. What increased supply does is keep the rent from going up so quickly.
(and of course 2-3 months of "free" rent is economically indistinguishable from a drop in rents).
I hate the "free months" with a passion, because they carry an implicit rent-raise next year: even if rent stays the same, your effective rent rises because you're paying for 12 months instead of 11.
I usually try to negotiate the "free months" into a lowered rent (e.g. $2250/month instead of $2400 with a one-month concession). It means that I pay a little more in the first year, but next year's rent will be anchored to this year's.
The difference between median market rate rents and median stabilized rents are quite small outside of Manhattan south of 96th Street.[1] Many neighborhoods have large number of nominally rent stabilized being offered for preferential rates (i.e. below the legally allowed maximum rent.)
Also, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have plenty of nice, and dense, housing. You should try leaving Downtown Manhattan by Disney World (tm) every once and a while.
Rent control is a red herring. It is dying along with the aging tenents still on it. Rent stabilization, including all the new "affordable housing" units built to get luxury developers more air rights or a tax abatement, is here to stay.
Not that either one effects the outer boroughs much (minus the parts of Brooklyn that might as well be Manhatten). As it happens that other city is also where you'll find most real New Yorkers living.
These insane prices are driven up by people like you who come here, don't know the proper prices
You should then do me a favor and tell me how I get a deal at the proper prices. I agree; the cost of living here is ridiculous. Show me how not to pay four-digit rents for a 1BR within 30 minutes of work and I will be very grateful.
don't know why the hell we have rent control or what it is and never check to see if you're being ripped off
Rent control was originally set in place in the 1940s to prevent a housing spike when people came back from the war. A good thing? It would be, if everyone could participate. Right now, though, that's not the case.
I have no problem with those who were alive during that time keeping rent-control. However, I do have a problem with it when people making $250,000 per year get in on RC because they have connections and pay key money to the children of the deceased. That I have a problem with. And then these hypocritical limousine liberals brag about how they're "sticking it to The Man" by using their connections to get a deal literally superior to ownership.
>>>I have no problem with those who were alive during that time keeping rent-control. However, I do have a problem with it when people making $250,000 per year get in on RC because they have connections and pay key money to the children of the deceased. That I have a problem with. And then these hypocritical limousine liberals brag about how they're "sticking it to The Man" by using their connections to get a deal literally superior to ownership.
Oh, I agree completely. I once worked for a boss making six figures who was paying the kind of rent I could afford and he was lucky because he'd been in that place for over twenty years. But what's the solution? If you charged him rent based on his income, the registered rent increases, and will never go down because the landlord will make sure the next tenant has a six-figure income.
New York City rents are an insane system that really does no one any good, especially for those who work and don't make six figures -- which is most of the people who live in NYC.
No, because I've seen this with my own eyes and heard it time and again. Landlords quoting a ridiculous rent to someone not from the city -- and getting that rent. Even I was screwed once, thinking I had a reasonable rent and then finding out -- after going to landlord-tenant court -- that the registered rent was actually one-third of what I'd been paying and I'd been illegally overcharged (yes, the landlord was ordered to refund the overage).
New Jersey is a free rent market. Hoboken and Jersey City rents went sky-high from the 1980s on -- even as ginormous skyscraper apartments were being built on the waterfront as "affordable" (to who!) apartments. Everyone who had lived there for decades got screwed out of living there.
> No, because I've seen this with my own eyes and heard it time and again.
This is completely irrelevant. The problem persists no matter what you think people 'should' do. The only thing that will change the status quo are laws that prohibit people from taking advantage of others.
Ultimately, this is just an instance of a classic conservative vs. liberal debate, so you may simply be incapable of seeing my point of view.
That said, I'm curious for myself how I might stick landlords on illegally high fees. In New York, what would be the best way to go about this? Is there a database I could refer to, or an agency I could get in touch with?
> By NYC standards, they aren't that bad. They're unattractive and small, but I've seen a lot worse.
3-year New Yorker here.
By NYC standards, most of these are bad. There certainly are worst places that cost more than what's being shown here, but that doesn't make these "not bad". My first apartment here had two separate rooms, a large kitchen, a bathroom and a "foyer", for $1k/month.
The only reason for living in any of the rooms they've shown here is an absolute need to live in that particular neighborhood, whether you're doing it because you need to be next to your job, or because you need to be neck-deep in the "culture" of that particular neighborhood.
I do however agree with you that New York isn't a good fit for most people, but for some people it's the only conceivable place to live.
> Williamsburg loft where there'd literally be a shower curtain separating my "room" (which was filthy) from a dark, tenement-like space with ~12 people in it. Kitchen stuff was at least 50 years old and probably didn't work
Are you talking about McKibbin by any chance? People live there as a sort of "experience" if that makes any sense - look how New York it is.
7-year New Yorker here.
By NYC standards, they aren't that bad. They're unattractive and small, but I've seen a lot worse.
Some of the places that I've had realtors show me make these places look like palaces. When I first got here and was living on close to nothing, I found (on Craigslist) a Williamsburg loft where there'd literally be a shower curtain separating my "room" (which was filthy) from a dark, tenement-like space with ~12 people in it. Kitchen stuff was at least 50 years old and probably didn't work. I visited at 10:00pm on a Thursday and it was loud as hell. $1200 per month. Um, no thanks. (By the way, Williamsburg has the most intense negative energy on earth. Hipsters sound okay in theory but I can't fucking stand them in practice. To give one a job is like pouring salt on a slug, except a good thing in the former case because the whining is entertaining.)
However, I agree with you. If you can get a stream of good jobs out in the Midwest, that is the way to go.
It's honestly not worth the cost of living here for most people. The high rents here are driven by (a) asshole foreign speculators that the government irresponsibly lets into the market, when a 6-months-and-1-day rule is really in order, (b) various legacy rent-control systems that wouldn't be a big deal except in the context of extreme price inelasticity-- I have no problem with the idea of rent control, or even with its continuation for the legitimate beneficiaries; but when upper-middle-class well-connected asswipes buy their way into an arrangement that's superior to ownership, and lock up housing stock, that's wrong, (c) NIMBY like you wouldn't believe, (d) parentally-funded hipster zeros whose guilt-ridden spawners decided they have some entitlement to the "New York Experience" (at $2-6k/month) even though they do absolutely nothing for anyone, (e) the fact that in investment banking and large-firm law, there really are major career benefits to living here (you pretty much need to live in Manhattan to get promoted in soft-side banking; trading is more of a meritocracy where you can live whereever you want as long as you show up on time). If none of these apply, New York is not worth the cost of living here. It is nice, if you take out the cost problem; I just think having savings and, eventually, the freedom with having a nest egg, improves the average person's quality of life by more. (You might guess that I don't intend to be here in 10 years, although I'm very glad I spent the 7 that I have.)