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Leasing Begins for New York’s First Micro-Apartments
- heifetz 11y agonothing micro about the price. $2975 for a 360sq ft apartment off of 2nd avenue, 10 minutes walk to the closest subway stop. The only saving grace is the fact that the apartments are new builds with decent finishes (from the pictures). Housing situation in Manhattan is certifiably nuts.
- thebiglebrewski 11y agoWhat can we actually do about it?
- Ocerge 11y agoNot live in Manhattan seems to be the only answer for common folk, unless you like a few roommates.
- nwah1 11y agoWe can make sure that prime locations which are idle are put into use, through land value taxation. If you saw the full extent of waste from all the craters of vacant or underutilized land, you'd be amazed.
- scotty79 11y agoTax employers proportionally to population density of office location times employee number. People flock to dense areas because that's where the money is. So incentivise the money to spread a bit.
- bradleyjg 11y agoIt depends on what you mean be 'we' and 'can', but Manhattan could have significantly higher population density without overwhelming the infrastructure. In fact, IIRC it isn't even currently at its maximum population density. One barrier among many to that is the overreach of the preservation movement. Of course I think it was a tragedy what happened to the original Penn Station but the pendulum has swung way way too far. Buildings, blocks, and even entire neighborhoods that don't have much compelling about them at all have had preservation related restrictions put in place. To take a specific example, much of the East Village is downright ugly and is historically significant only for being an affordable place for newcomers to live. The best way to honor that legacy isn't preserving blocks and blocks of four to six story walkups but by allowing a lot more density to bring prices down -- particularly towards the south-west part of the neighborhood where there are more subway options.
- ghaff 11y agoYes, the Penn Station story is certainly sad. At the same time, I think it's hard to say that the "urban renewal" leading to Lincoln Center wasn't a net positive.
- misiti3780 11y agowhat is the "penn state story"?
- ghaff 11y agoWhere Pennsylvania Station in NYC (and Madison Square Garden) sits today was once a grand station building designed by McKim, Mead, and White. When Penn Central went bankrupt, the air rights were sold off and the railroad station was moved completely underground. The demolition of the old Penn Station was widely regarded as essentially cultural vandalism and arguably played a role in a shift of attitudes toward a more preservationist mindset. (Others argue that this storyline is an oversimplification and there was growing pushback about 60s era urban renewal in any case.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(New_York_City) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(New_York...
- nerfhammer 11y agoPenn station used to be as magnificent as grand central, but was torn down and replaced by a mire of grimy tunnels. It wasn't the original owner's fault, they were going bankrupt and were being forced to sell off their assets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(New_York_City)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(New_York...
- officialchicken 11y agoAs most Robert Moses stories go, it's about car culture and using highways and other physical barriers to enforce some bad socioeconomic policies - which was very common around the world at the time. In the end, they ripped down the old iconic station to build arguably the ugliest sports stadium in the world (Madison Sq Garden) and equally unimpressive #1 Penn Plaza. Note that the tracks and platforms haven't changed much since 1905 with the exception of the demolition of the "Northern" yard and highline when they build the Javitz center. The new WSY will be build atop the existing platforms... so 3 iterations of station on top of unchanged train platform in a bit over a century.
- occamrazor 11y agoAllowing the construction of smaller apartments, and the partitioning of older ones into smaller units. As I wrote in another comment, I do not consider 25 m^2 (260 sq ft) a _small_ studio.
- TrevorJ 11y agoSome RV's are nearly twice that.
- greggman 11y agoMeaning you consider it a medium sized studio? There's tons of apartments in Tokyo that are < 20m^2. In fact I did a quick search, didn't even filter by size, first page of hits is 14, 14, 39, 10, 14, 15, 15, 15, 15, 14, 13, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 15, 15, 15, 15 Here's one of the 7.5 ones http://www.chintai.net/detail/bk-C010058070000000000000250007/ http://www.chintai.net/detail/bk-C01005807000000000000025000... at least it's only about $500 a month and it's actually downtown. Also Hong Kong. Note: As someone that grew up in a ~100m^2 house I desire a similar space but having spent 6 years in a 28m^2 studio and having visited a few families in Tokyo and HK crammed into tiny spaces I sometimes wonder how spoiled I am.
- occamrazor 11y agoYes, I would say medium sized. I lived in studios from 20 to 30 m^2 and I thought I had plenty of space. I had friends living in 12 m^2 in Paris.
- officialchicken 11y agoZoning - The proliferation of areas zoned R4-R6 in NYC is nuts. They should be removed in all but a few places - don't want to totally ruin the "fabric". IMO, there's a lot of R7/R8 that could or should be R9,R10,R10X or other mixed use. http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/zoning/zoning-map-table.page http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/zoning/zoning-map-table.pa...
- lips 11y agoAs an individual, not much. Though I sometimes wonder what the rent landscape would look like if people with moderate amounts of money were more flexible in their neighborhood choice. A lot of these crazy high prices are driven by people wanting to be in specific neighborhoods. Sometimes driven by cultural niche, sometimes convenience, and sometimes mostly just race.
- bduerst 11y agoTechnically these micro-apartments are the solution, even with their seemingly outrageous prices. The best bet is to flood the market with supply, and for an island that means going taller or going higher density.
- logfromblammo 11y agoUnfurnished ($950/mo) is still more than I pay for a ~2400 sqft house with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, with garage, back patio and yard. The back patio has my own personal grill on it. It's getting rusty now, but it's about 8 years old, still usable, and only cost me $45 and some assembly time. My communal lounge rarely has more than 4 people in it, and none of them are creepy, annoying, stinky, or crazy. My home is, however, a 67 hour walk from the nearest metro train station. So they got me on that one. One of the solutions to a dearth of housing in the major cities is to convince more people to live somewhere else (lower local demand). But that requires employers to have their workplaces somewhere else. If you are starting a new business, please try to be aware that you will end up paying a large fraction of the combined cost of all your employees' housing, in the form of higher pay expectations. That is a cost that you can easily cut without sacrificing much, just by setting up shop in places with cheaper housing. Alternatively, convince the expensive cities to levy a tax on businesses based upon the amounts their employees pay for their housing and commuting costs, to make that relationship more obvious. Avoid San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, New York City, Seattle, Riverside, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Denver, and Portland. Consider Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, Cincinnati, Birmingham, St. Louis, Columbus, and Louisville. If you absolutely must have a world-class city, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Phoenix are all reasonably priced candidates. But let's not all pick the same city, or we just end up with the same problem in a different place.
- ghaff 11y agoIt also highlights that just "build up" isn't a magic bullet for high housing prices in areas where a lot of people want to live. In any given location, you can always do more building but, in some places, there seems to be almost insatiable demand.
- rconti 11y agoIf they hadn't "built up", prices would be much higher than they are now.
- ghaff 11y agoOr not, because there would be a lot less business transacted in Manhattan as well without skyscrapers and therefore probably less demand to live there. But I'm not arguing your basic point. I'm just saying that you can have a lot of high rises and still have very expensive housing. Building more tall residential buildings may indeed be part of the answer to astronomical rents in a given city but they're not, by themselves, the cure-all they're sometimes portrayed as.
- mahyarm 11y agoPrices in manhattan & co are less than SF, and the rate of increase is in the single digits per year vs. the doubling we've had in 3-4 years here in the bay area. That is why it's not much of a price shock for NYC.
- warfangle 11y ago$2975 for a 360sq ft apartment furnished with niche transformable furniture, and access to communal lounges, roof deck and grill. Unfurnished is cheaper :)
- wdewind 11y agoThat price is insane. I pay less for a bigger apartment with brand new appliances, dishwasher, roof deck, doorman etc and I live in a much better location in Manhattan. I even pay less than the unfurnished price.
- api 11y agoAt least in Manhattan you get decent transit.
- cdnsteve 11y agoFollowing the 30% of your salary rule, that means you need to earn, at minimum, $116,400 USD per year to afford 360sq ft.
- billpaetzke 11y agoIf you base the rule on net income instead of gross income, you'd need 200k per year to afford it properly. Assumption: 40% is the federal + NY state + NY city income tax for a six-figure earner 200K * 0.60 = 120k of net income = 10k/month net income 3k rent / 10k monthly net income = 30% of net income
- pc86 11y agoFor what it's worth I've always heard it as 30% of your gross pay, not net.
- emergentcypher 11y agoI don't know why. It just adds a level of indirection. Comparing anything with gross pay is pretty meaningless.
- guiambros 11y agoQuite the opposite. Comparing anything with net pay is pretty pointless. Your total tax rate depends on many factors: total household income, number of kids, deductibles, filling jointly or separately, etc. Plus, the exact amount varies over the year, depending on how much you've already contributed in sales and federal taxes. On the other hand, gross pay is a single, round, fixed number. I understand this may sound a weird concept for people in some countries outside the US, but it's a much simpler concept once you get used to it.
- pc86 11y agoTo continue off of what guiambros said, unless you get no refund or bill come tax time every April, you don't know what your net pay is until Q2 of the following year.
- occamrazor 11y agoHow is 25-30 m^2 considered a "micro" apartment? Sounds more like a medium-large studio to me.
- bydo 11y agoFrom the article: >Apartments in New York City ordinarily can be no smaller than 400 square feet, but the city waived those restrictions for this development. >Small apartments are not new to New York. Thousands of apartments that predate the city’s 1987 zoning restrictions would be considered micro units by today’s standards. So they basically are just moderately sized studio apartments, and the only notable bit is that they're the first new construction moderately sized studio apartments in nearly thirty years.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- misiti3780 11y agothat isnt true - i currently live in a 220 sqr foot apt in the lower east side
- rco8786 11y agoWhat isn't true?
- themagician 11y agoYou live in an illegal unit.
- ghaff 11y agoThat's pretty small. According to the article, it's around half the size of the average studio in Manhattan. Mind you, my experience with smaller hotel rooms is that you can do a lot to optimize for a small footprint that makes the experience better than just using the same furniture and layout in a smaller space. But this is still fairly tight quarters.
- nsxwolf 11y agoSmaller than my basement home office. I do not regret living in Chicago's suburbs.
- jseliger 11y agoThe development is the product of a 2012 design competition intended to address one of the city’s more vexing housing problems: How do you build safe, legal and reasonably priced apartments for single New Yorkers who do not want to double — or triple — up with roommates? This is actually not that hard: the solution is to reduce or eliminate height restrictions and build more subways. That's it. I wrote more about the issue here: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-cities/ http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu... and do see the links within it. The failure to understand basic economics is amazing.
- ghaff 11y agoYou mean like the $4.5 billion 2nd Avenue subway that is nearing completion after being discussed for something like a hundred years. And, while one can always build more and build higher, Manhattan isn't exactly a study in low-rise construction (although much of the city is low/mid-rise). And if you stay in NYC hotel rooms where you're looking out at some narrow shaft between buildings, it's not hard to understand why there are some limits on just building skyscrapers willy nilly.
- noonshine 11y agoI cannot wait for tiny house living to take off. I want to sleep in a tiny box, have access to a super clean shower and spend 100% of my free time and money doing fun things around town. I don't want to force other people to live in those conditions... so how do you allow it without making it mandatory for poor people?
- sliverstorm 11y agoIt needs to be attractive to many people (not just yourself) so that it's financially sane to develop such a building. That's really the key.
- tsunamifury 11y agoAs someone who lives in a Tiny House, its cute until its not. Your life grows, but your place doesn't. Its like being planted in too small a pot. By the time you move on, market rates for larger places to live have gone up a lot. Its a bad solution all around.
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoIt's really tricky... But really, what's the alternative? Build larger homes people can't afford? That causes gentrification even faster, pushing people outside the city who can't afford it. In Amsterdam for example the waiting list for social housing is something like 10-15 years... so either you live way outside the city centre, have special connections, make a lot of money to pay the market rate or you leave the city. Building smaller homes would probably reduce the waiting list to something more sensible, the alternative is for people to leave the city and commute in... I'd guess that having the option to choose to live small bests not having it, but I'm definitely not completely sure on that, lots of counterexamples. I do think regulations can and should say something about the number of people living in a unit, and enforce it. A small studio should be just that, a studio for one person or a couple. That's really hard to enforce of course, but if possible, prevent the issue of having 5 people living in a place designed for 1-2.
- bsg75 11y agoInteresting that the pop-up ad that appeared for me was for a leasing of apartments in the US $1.275 million range. Home hunting in Manhattan must be a challenge.
- daveguy 11y agoI am guessing most people don't home hunt in Manhattan. Those that do probably have assistants do most of the searching for them.
- bradleyjg 11y agoThe thing about NYC that may not be quite familiar to people from other US cities is that mass transit is pretty good. It may be the case in SF that if you want to work in SoMa your choices are living in SF proper or spending at least an hour to get to work with a large standard deviation, but in NYC you can live in Astoria (Queens) work in Midtown (Manhattan) and have a twenty-five minute pretty reliable commute. So choosing to live in Manhattan is a luxury rather than a necessity for most people. That's one reason why I think keeping affordable apartments in Manhattan isn't the right thing to be optimizing for (though it may well be part of a larger picture).
- mahyarm 11y agoIf you live close to a BART station, you can have the same 25-30m reliable commute like you would in new york. Source: personal experience.
- api 11y agoThese are almost what were called "coffin hotels" in Gibson's Neuromancer, but there at least they were cheap. Nobody writes cyberpunk fiction anymore because it's no longer fiction.
- surement 11y agoEvery time I see a story about miniature homes in Hong Kong, freight containers, Manhattan, etc. is that I would have to give up almost all of my hobbies if I lived like this. They are really only convenient for people who spend very little time at home.
- gdilla 11y agoBut that's what NYC life is about for many. Rents are so high that having a lot of space means you have to be quite well off. But for most, the magic of NYC is outside your home. When you throw a party, you don't do it at your place, you do it at a bar. Minimizing rent means you can spend more on going out. It'll be wildly popular for the unmarried/childless set.
- sliverstorm 11y agoAnd people who's hobbies don't involve any bulky equipment. You could probably squeeze skis in, but a pair of mountain bikes or a kayak? Good luck.
- georgefrick 11y agoNot necessarily; all hobbies simply become social. Gunpla? You go down to a anime store to do it with others. Kayaking? Storage facility the manages the kayaks and can rent personal storage. Robotics? You'd head down to the local Maker shop and rent storage/locker. It's simply becoming "social". I'm not saying I agree or like; just that it doesn't mean giving everything up. But.. There can be benefits to building a robot in a room where you can go on the slack channel and ask for a part... or kayak with someone new similar to going for a round of gold with a new partner.
- rco8786 11y agoHmmm. A studio for 2700-3000 in that area of MH is basically market rate for existing, 400+ sqft studios if not even a little bit high...kinda defeats the purpose, no?
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoQuestion to all you HNs readers... what's the situation in your city/country like when it comes to communal/shared living, particularly with 'strangers', i.e. two young professionals who share a home for economic reasons? Here in the Netherlands it happens but it doesn't seem to be the standard. It's extremely popular for students, and some of the leases remain after the students graduate and it effectively becomes a young-professional's home, and rooms get filled up when someone leaves, usually via FB connections. But actually applying to live with strangers say as a 29 year old is rare... either you have your own place, or one with a partner. The reason I ask is because, theoretically and often in practice, shared living is more space-efficient. The living room is shared, the kitchen, the bathroom, the washer, all the little things, and then you attach 4 bedrooms to it, and you can get a footprint that's smaller than 4 studios with a similarly sized kitchen/bathroom etc. But it only works if, culturally, people can stomach living together with other people they're not family or intimate friends with. While undoubtedly many people want their own place, in a time (and city) of scarcity of space, I wonder if part of the solution should not simply come from shared living, rather than more space efficient solo-living. What's it like in your town?
- fatlasp 11y agoHere in Boulder CO it seems like a temporary 'getting on your feet' type of move. Many of the listings I see for shared living are along the lines of "I just moved to Colorado and need a shared living situation while I get on my feet and find a 'permanent' living situation." Rentals are highly competitive in this area so it makes sense because many leases are filled very quickly - already living in the area helps when you're trying to find your ideal living situation.
- showerst 11y agoHere in DC (One of the most expensive US metro areas), it's super common to rent a room in a 'group house' in your 20s with 2-5 other young professionals or students. I'd say the majority of my 25-35 year old friend group started that way, and the single ones still do. That's partially a quirk of fast gentrification making housing super expensive, combined with lots of housing stock that fits well (row houses), and the fact that not many young people own cars, so parking isn't a problem. Given the choice I'm sure virtually all of them would prefer a 1br apartment, but that starts at $1800+/mo in the desirable parts of the city. Previously I lived in St. Louis, which is a much more spread out, cheap suburban city, and most of my friends had apartments. If I had to guess I'd say the 'group house' model (whatever the local nickname) is predominant in New York, SF, DC, Seattle, and a few other expensive, dense cities, and rarer in the more suburban cities of the midwest/south. In NYC people often share small apartments since even a row house is out of reach.
- amelius 11y agoSee also: http://crasstalk.com/2012/07/nyc-to-residents-live-in-a-matchbox-you-small-thimble-person/ http://crasstalk.com/2012/07/nyc-to-residents-live-in-a-matc...