9 ms·
nothing 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 t
by heifetz 11y ago
nothing 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.