20 ms·

Test Driving New York City's New Micro Apartments

129 points by e15ctr0n 10y ago

branchless 10y ago
“If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, “how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?” Thanks for the stereotype, but I think we just want the right to keep our labour, not hand part of it over to the boomers and part to the banks, thanks. "Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a friction-free environment? It irritated me that a 25-year-old would soon be lolling in my bed" Really amazing. Such a soft option living in a cupboard and paying a fortune for it, or a fortune for other alternatives.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  So you want to benefit from what prior generations built but owe them nothing? That seems unlikely to work out.
  - branchless 10y ago
    We all stand on former generation's work, but normally living standards don't drop between generations.
  - DrJokepu 10y ago
    Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work, each generation is supposed to "pay it forward". This is always how it worked, if you think about it, until recent advances in medicine simply no generation lived long enough to collect rent from their children, it's a concept invented by the baby boomers.
rayiner 10y ago
These are stupid. Carmel Place is in Murray Hill. That neighborhood has many normal sized (450-500 square foot) studios in the $2,500 range. Not like gross old units either, nicely renovated ones.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  As the first such units to come onto the markets, these units are unfortunately priced as a luxury, because of their uniqueness. They thus definitely don't make sense for people who are just looking for value for their money, which is probably most people. If the market had thousands of units like this then you would see them priced below the $2,500 450-500 sqft units as they should be, but until then, the larger units will be the sensible choice.
- TillE 10y ago
  Yeah, I was shocked by the price. You're paying roughly normal Manhattan studio apartment rent for half the square footage. I don't get it.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    It's not a normal studio, it's furnished and sounds quite luxe despite the size: > Carmel Place’s rent includes not just internet and Wi-Fi, but a weekly tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie.
    - home_boi 10y ago
      They've got the demographics all confused. Are they in the cheap, low end or luxury high end industry? People who want those amenities are in the luxury market. They want a much bigger apartment. The people who want a 300 ft studio are in the cheap market. They don't care about these amenities.
      - wastedhours 10y ago
        I don't think that they've missed the demographics - surely those amenities are in-keeping with a young professional market? As in, small space, nicely outfitted and time saving extras - considering they'd be working long hours and going out to socialise, seems well suited?
- 10y ago
iamdave 10y ago
While the lion’s share — 32 — of the units are market rate, with monthly rents ranging from $2,446 to $3,195, eight have been set aside for formerly homeless veterans, and 14 units are designated affordable, with monthly rents from $914 to $1,873, and for which 60,000 people applied in a lottery. Is it just odd word choice or does "formerly homeless" mean they're put up somewhere until these are ready to lease? Also, do these homeless vets have work? Or am I misreading this paragraph entirely? This isn't any sort of indictment on the homeless population...just, $914 for something of that size is affordable pretty much only by New York (and I guess SF) standards, and I wonder if instead of putting a dent (maybe even a scratch) in some of the problems that creates chronic homelessness, if this is just cycling through a series of "guests" who stay for maybe months at a time and end right back up on the street. I suppose I have to take the article at its word: "It's a start".
- bradleyjg 10y ago
  The 8 homeless vet units are separate from the 14 affordable units, and are probably being paid for by some combination of federal, state, and city dollars. The affordable units were awarded by lottery open to anyone meeting the income guidelines. Also in official NYC-government-speak homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the street. It means a lack of "secure, adequate, and permanent" housing. So it includes situations like living in a shelter or in a doubled up situation (e.g. on a relative's couch).
  - iamdave 10y ago
    Both very good things to know. Thanks for clearing up.
iLoch 10y ago
So, I lived in a micro apartment last year in Vancouver. Newly renovated like the one in this video, albeit with less features (no dishwasher or multi-purpose furniture.) The apartment shown in this video is a luxurious 300sqft. My "apartment" was smaller than this. While the space is acceptable, technically, to live in - I can't recommend it if you have the choice of a larger place. These sorts of places typically feature high ceilings, which is nice, but that's about all they have going for them. For me, coming home felt more like arriving at a hotel. With everything so tightly packed, there was a constant need to pack things away and shuffle items around. It's hard to feel at home when you can barely even (and possibly even not at all!) fit your own furniture in your place. Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom. I won't dispute this is a better living situation than many people currently have, but given the price tag of these apartments (I paid over $1000/mo here, $2500-3000 in Murray Hill for 300sqft???) I would advise finding somewhere else to live. Somewhere that has a doorway to walk through that separates your living spaces.
- zyxley 10y ago
  > Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom. That's exactly my thought. I'd rather just have a normal bed, save a couple of square feet of floor space, and maybe be able to cram in some more storage under or over it.
- nine_k 10y ago
  I think the whole point is being very close to whatever is attractive in Manhattan, at a price of both serious rent and small area. A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads. Otherwise, Brooklyn and Queens offer much more cost-effective, well-connected, entirely urban neighborhoods, maybe not as dense but still perfectly walkable, bikable, and equipped with subway. The cost is, of course, 20-40 more minutes to/from Manhattan.
carlob 10y ago
I have a friend in Paris who lives with his wife in 33 m^2 (355 sqft). Their apartment is not even technically a studio, but rather a 1BR, they routinely host dinner parties with up to 8-10 people. I've also heard people compliment them on the size of the apartment, they probably lived in places of about half the surface.
drivingmenuts 10y ago
I made it about a minute and couldn't take the reporter anymore - if you're going to do video, try to hire someone with more life than a dead carpet to do the speaking part. While she may be a fine writer, clearly, she isn't a presenter for video.
- dang 10y ago
  Please stop posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
> “New York has long been a leader in social innovation,” Mr. Klinenberg said. “The trend of living alone happened here before anywhere else.” I don't understand. Check Bay Area Craigslist and you will find that a rich selection of small studios is available for rent on any given day. And they're much more affordable than the one in this article too.
- srtjstjsj 10y ago
  "Living alone" is more "social collapse" than "social innovation". But New York has long been a leader in social collapse.
- Decade 10y ago
  Apply to them and discover that most of the listings are spam.
lewisl9029 10y ago
Completely off-topic, but I'm curious what websites/services people here like to use to find a place for rent in the SF Bay Area.
- shlant 10y ago
  Even though we found our place on craigslist, be aware that 90% of postings are scams. In the City, you really need to remember the phrase "if it's too good to be true, it probably is".
  - KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
    I rented three times off Craigslist and have not had any trouble. I did respond to a couple of the ads that were "too good to be true" just for the heck of it. The poster came back with a request to wire them money, which was pretty obviously a scam. I wouldn't rent without seeing the place first so this was not a problem anyway. But if you're trying to rent sight-unseen, then you probably should use a service with more serious vetting.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  In my experience, Craigslist is the primary source. Other websites that I looked at were at best a moderately out-of-date mirror of Craigslist.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    I think what happens is that every property manager and landlord lists on Craigslist, as well as a few other places. Craigslist is pretty much a superset of all apartment ads in the area. Some of these other sites copy Craigslist, and some just have duplicate postings put there by the landlords.
- twblalock 10y ago
  I used Padmapper back when it had access to Craigslist data. Now, I just use Craigslist itself. So does everyone else I know. There aren't a lot of better options, aside from cold-calling apartment management companies. Everyone lists on Craigslist.
minikomi 10y ago
This is more roomy than many of my friend's apartments here in Tokyo. Different circumstances, I know, but just some perspective.
baddox 10y ago
Oh, that's a "micro apartment?" It looks the same size as my San Francisco Soma apartment, or perhaps slightly larger. I don't have any of the fancy specialized furniture either, so my queen sized bed, wardrobe, and desk take up most of the room.
castratikron 10y ago
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
- jonathantm 10y ago
  something something multipass
teslaberry 10y ago
i lived in a 140 square foot apartment in new york which had formerly been a single room occupancy built over 100 years ago. small tenement like housing is nothing new. small apartments slowly create cabin fever-------ANXIETY. if you live in a small space you must spend a lot more time outside of it than inside of a normal sized space. also, it is vital to have minimum 9 foot high cielings for a small space. i had 8 foot ceilings that are standard in new york. finally, a loft in a room with lower than 10 foot cielings means you cannot have a 5'10 foot person stand comfortably underneath the loft and have a 5'10 foot person on their knees in bed on top of the loft without one of them hitting their head on the underside of either the celiing or the bottom of the loft. furthermore, a loft gets very hot in the summer and remains somewhat warmer than the floor in the winter. this effect increases inversely with measure of distance between the loft surface to the cieling
sologoub 10y ago
If they are serious about space efficiency, they should look at layouts Soviets developed to "warehouse" their citizen in - no luxury, but it really worked magic with efficiency. I grew up in 33 m^2 apartment. Layout is similar to this, minus the balcony: http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-cb300x198.jpeg http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-... The major difference is that you have a separation of space with the kitchen and hallway (with closets). That separation made it fairly livable for a family with a child! (Don't recommend stuffing a teenager in there, but it has been done...) The completely open studio layout will likely not be great even for a couple, as sometimes your really do need space or privacy. A blocked off kitchen affords that and doubles as a decent home office. I don't recall us resorting to space-efficient furniture, but then again Soviet furniture was smaller already and I did sleep on a foldout couch. For entertaining, that tiny kitchen actually fit 5-6 people reasonably well. I think our informal record was 14 (3 standing, rest comfortably seating). The kitchen became such a part of the culture as a place to sit down and talk privately, that there have been articles and books written about it. It really highlights the genius utility of that small extra space. Unfortunately, all I could find in English is a really terrible NPR article that shows a place you'd need a hasmat suit to enter as a "typical" Russian kitchen... Still the utility is amazing! EDIT: as discussed below, Tokyo calls such layout 1DK (with 2 rooms effectively, 2nd being the kitchen). These are much more desirable than the 1K true studio apartments.
- alexeiz 10y ago
  Say yes to Soviet-style apartments in Manhattan!
  - sologoub 10y ago
    Oh hell no! But they are doing worse than that with these...
- gambiting 10y ago
  I was just about to comment, that this "apartment" is pretty much identical in size and layout to an apartment my parents got from the communist government of Poland in the 70s. It was small, but at least it was free - is $2400/month a common price in New York? I currently live in UK and pay $900/month for a detached 3 bedroom house, $2400/month is more than I make a month as a c++ programmer - just seems very very high to me. Edit: I do make more than $2400/month, I fudged the conversion rate
erikb 10y ago
3200? Did she say the cost for that apartment is 3200? First I thought I heard 320. That would be okay. It's the size of a university dorm room (at least where I live). 320 is an okay price for that. But 3200? There are a lot of places on that planet where you can rent a villa for less, a lot less.
- geofft 10y ago
  Yes, but the goal of building housing in New York City is for that housing to be in New York City, not anywhere else on the planet.
  - erikb 10y ago
    You are aware that most people on this planet, even in highly developed countries, earn less pre tax than $3200, right?
    - geofft 10y ago
      Yes. Again, the goal here is building housing in Manhattan, not building housing for highly developed countries in general. People who aren't familiar with New York City (especially people whose impression of housing is influenced by San Francisco) may not realize that the city has a generally-competent public transit infrastructure, making is possible to work in Manhattan without living in Manhattan or even in New York City and without hating your life. Of course, housing in the outer boroughs and in nearby cities is also expensive compared to, say, housing in a small university town somewhere in the Midwest. But this project is specifically about increasing the density of housing in Manhattan itself, which will hopefully let demand from people who can pay $3200/month shift away from the outer boroughs and nearby cities.
      - erikb 10y ago
        You are right that my confusion is about the squaremeter price in NYC in general, not in this project specifically. That is exactly my point. I don't want to bring any other point. Why are we still arguing about this point?
cannonpr 10y ago
Seems like a very poor approach to space efficiency if compared to something like this http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in-hong-kong-transforms-into-24-rooms/ http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in-hong-...
woodpanel 10y ago
It's a downer to me, that despite the stated aim of "keeping housing affordable", prices of such apartments will usually default to "still eating most of the household's income". Is this proof for too much or too less government intervention? Or is the usual increase in price caused by the new micro-renters themselves, in that they are increasing attractiveness of the area? I think it's most likely just that: We're bad savers and not being in the red at the end of the month will turn off the biggest behavioral signal for switching expenditure habits.
- eru 10y ago
  New York still has plenty of underdeveloped areas, ever in and really close to the centre of town. (Rent control is partially to blame here, I think. Zoning, too. But locals might be able to tell you more.) Overall, even with all of the city centre built up to 40 stories, you'll still see relatively high rent---the location is just too good to do business in; so people will bid it up. The Economist had a whole section about cities a while ago. It was in the issue that also had http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val...
- redwood 10y ago
  I think when folks focus on the price point of new construction being high, they're missing the bigger picture: These kinds of new units put downward price pressure on whatever was previously "lower on the totem pole". In other words, those studios in Murray Hill without a door man / elevator which were already priced below this price point will become even less luxurious looking as these are built.. that means that "regular folks" who don't care to live in these shiny shoe boxes prosper!
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    What your describing happened in the used car market c4c caused a panic that put the price floor of the bottom of the used car market in a place it couldn't have naturally got itself to. This put upward pressure on the entire market. It became much more profitable to have a bunch of higher end used (CPO, certified pre owned) cars lying around to sell. To churn those out better leases became more available. At the same time it became harder to write a housing loan that would obviously flop. Banks started writing more bad new car loans. The incentive to do so being that if it defaults soon enough the car will get repo'd, auctioned and bought by a dealer to be sold as certified pre owned and the loan is in the black at the end of it all. Go look at the average prices for various new/used vehicle categories and you'll see an upward trend everywhere. Allowing any part of the market to go upward in price puts upward pressure on the rest of the market because there's now more competition for whatever hasn't become out of reach. Housing, transportation, education and a few others are necessities that pretty much everyone needs the same amount of. Until you saturate the entire market in an area with high end stuff to the point where the price of the high end stuff decreases dramatically the price of low end stuff will rise. It's really hard to saturate the housing market with expensive and new because no developer will build more nice expensive stuff when there's a larger profit margin building cheaper low end stuff that's been driven up in price by all the high end stuff.
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
I lived in an apartment smaller than this in Lausanne Switzerland. This seems like luxury in comparison (granted, mine only cost 800 CHF in rent but...).
barking 10y ago
I live in a rural location. I could not financially afford that micro apartment but I consider the people who live in it far worse off than me.
- eru 10y ago
  Depends on how much you value living in New York City.
  - barking 10y ago
    That's true, I'm not the most sociable of people and a lot of what makes cities attractive is wasted on me. When I moved to the country it was the libraries and the bookshops I missed. Today with broadband and amazon, I don't miss those either.
NTripleOne 10y ago
This is like twice the size of the studio flat I rented while at university...
Steeeve 10y ago
New? I remember 300 square foot places for absurd money back in the 90s. How small/expensive are they getting exactly?
dagw 10y ago
"If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, "how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?" I take it this person doesn't cook. My first apartment (which was quite a bit smaller than this apparent) came with a two burner stove and no oven. With those two burners, a rice cooker and the small toaster style oven I bought, I quite comfortable cooked just about anything you'd care mention.
wwwdonohue 10y ago
> It’s also adorable, a compressed vision of the city in both ethos and mien. Imagine a "groovy millennial" Instagrammming a vegan cheesecake -- forever. I appreciate the job the NYT Real Estate section does. Without them (and Style) the newspaper probably would no longer exist. But articles like this are so devoid of reality that I understand why everyone thinks people are crazy to live in New York City.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  In what sense is this article devoid of reality? This is a real apartment, really available to lease.
chrismbarr 10y ago
As a non New Yorker that price for the square footage is astronomical to me! I live in a small rural town in Georgia and I pay $890 a month to rent a 1618 sq foot house (+ a large front porch). The house is over 100 years old and it for sure has it's quirks, but for the price it's great. I can live in this house for 3-4 months for the cost of 1 month in that apartment which is about 1/5th the size! I know that New York salaries are typically higher to compensate, but I work remote for a company as a front-end designer/dev and make a good living without having to pay "big city" prices. I get the appeal of living in a big with though, Atlanta is near by and I love visiting; but I greatly prefer saving my money and/or spending it on things other than expensive rent.
- cauterized 10y ago
  Nah, that price per square foot is pretty high even by NYC standards (almost double what's typical for that neighborhood, which is expensive fore city as a whole but middle-high for Manhattan). And one of the things you learn here pretty quickly is that you don't REALLY need all that much space. My first apartment was about 300 sqft, and a third of it went entirely unused. My current studio is probably 450, and while I have a ton more stuff now than I did then, the amount of space is more than adequate. I wouldn't know what to do with 1600 sqft even with a spouse and kids! Oh, and costs about 2/3 as much as that apartment, in an arguably nicer neighborhood in Brooklyn. /shrug We each have our own priorities for what we're willing to pay for.
varjag 10y ago
The problem with multi-functional, stowaway etc furniture is it tends to fall apart pretty quick with daily use. In couple of years you'll have issues with engaging that table's feet in unfolded position, that neat wardrobe hanger will fall out on you when you open doors and so on. And it's not really a huge choice with this kind of furniture to replace.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  The table looked very awkward. I actually previously had a solid wood IKEA table with two folding leaves and storage space in between, which cost about £200, and looked a lot more usable (and attractive) than that table. Admittedly you could only get 6 people round it rather than 8/10. But then again, it didn't cost £3000.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
Why is this a big deal? The mobile home and RV industries solved the problem of maximizing available space decades ago. The space spend on propane tanks, water heaters, and other utilities that are no needed at an apartment level can be repurposed having larger hardware in the kitchen and bathroom. I know it's bad marketing to say "we modify off the shelf manufactured home floor plans to better fit an apartment use case" but that's exactly what micro-apartments are. The same tricks just get applied in a different context. Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy but living in a 3 dimensional trailer park is? Well at least some writer made a buck off of writing about it.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  Well you just wrote about it and even offered a different take on the story didn't you?
- VLM 10y ago
  >Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy It isn't cool. That's the problem. I listen to a podcast about a week ago (sorry forget all the details) on the general topic of how do you sell mobile home materials and economics and lifestyle to people who don't think mobile homes are "cool" especially not for "the cool people". Well, change the name, call it a tiny house or tiny apartment, all done. There is an interesting economic side issue. Because bubbles are bubbles we can assume real estate will go up 5% per year into infinity, right? That solves the classic problem with RV / mobile home trailer parks where the materials are not built to last more than a couple years... wait for real estate bubble appreciation to build up for five years, cash out refinance, then gut and remodel. Doesn't matter if nothing in there will last more than 10 years if the business model is to gut and remodel every 5... Of course if the financial situation changes and prices can't go up 5% annually in perpetuity, then imagine what the place will look like in 20, 30 years.
smackfu 10y ago
That expanding table is around four grand.
- michael_h 10y ago
  From the mouseovers in the graphic: * Wall bed: $7,780 * Coffee table: $1,450 * Expanding table: $4,165 * Folding chairs: $250/each ($1,000)
kafkaesq 10y ago
In a nutshell: they're re-inventing what was once a vast and thriving community (since substantially eviscerated) of what was were once widely known, amongst anybody above a certain age, as Single-Room Occupancy dwellings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy except now market-rate (natch!), and with decidedly cheesier architecture.

129 points by e15ctr0n 10y ago

“If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, “how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?” Thanks for the stereotype, but I think we just want the right to keep our labour, not hand part of it over to the boomers and part to the banks, thanks. "Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a friction-free environment? It irritated me that a 25-year-old would soon be lolling in my bed" Really amazing. Such a soft option living in a cupboard and paying a fortune for it, or a fortune for other alternatives.

oldmanjay 10y ago
So you want to benefit from what prior generations built but owe them nothing? That seems unlikely to work out.
- branchless 10y ago
  We all stand on former generation's work, but normally living standards don't drop between generations.
- DrJokepu 10y ago
  Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work, each generation is supposed to "pay it forward". This is always how it worked, if you think about it, until recent advances in medicine simply no generation lived long enough to collect rent from their children, it's a concept invented by the baby boomers.

rayiner 10y ago

These are stupid. Carmel Place is in Murray Hill. That neighborhood has many normal sized (450-500 square foot) studios in the $2,500 range. Not like gross old units either, nicely renovated ones.

CydeWeys 10y ago
As the first such units to come onto the markets, these units are unfortunately priced as a luxury, because of their uniqueness. They thus definitely don't make sense for people who are just looking for value for their money, which is probably most people. If the market had thousands of units like this then you would see them priced below the $2,500 450-500 sqft units as they should be, but until then, the larger units will be the sensible choice.
TillE 10y ago
Yeah, I was shocked by the price. You're paying roughly normal Manhattan studio apartment rent for half the square footage. I don't get it.
- jonknee 10y ago
  It's not a normal studio, it's furnished and sounds quite luxe despite the size: > Carmel Place’s rent includes not just internet and Wi-Fi, but a weekly tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie.
  - home_boi 10y ago
    They've got the demographics all confused. Are they in the cheap, low end or luxury high end industry? People who want those amenities are in the luxury market. They want a much bigger apartment. The people who want a 300 ft studio are in the cheap market. They don't care about these amenities.
    - wastedhours 10y ago
      I don't think that they've missed the demographics - surely those amenities are in-keeping with a young professional market? As in, small space, nicely outfitted and time saving extras - considering they'd be working long hours and going out to socialise, seems well suited?
10y ago

iamdave 10y ago

While the lion’s share — 32 — of the units are market rate, with monthly rents ranging from $2,446 to $3,195, eight have been set aside for formerly homeless veterans, and 14 units are designated affordable, with monthly rents from $914 to $1,873, and for which 60,000 people applied in a lottery. Is it just odd word choice or does "formerly homeless" mean they're put up somewhere until these are ready to lease? Also, do these homeless vets have work? Or am I misreading this paragraph entirely? This isn't any sort of indictment on the homeless population...just, $914 for something of that size is affordable pretty much only by New York (and I guess SF) standards, and I wonder if instead of putting a dent (maybe even a scratch) in some of the problems that creates chronic homelessness, if this is just cycling through a series of "guests" who stay for maybe months at a time and end right back up on the street. I suppose I have to take the article at its word: "It's a start".

bradleyjg 10y ago
The 8 homeless vet units are separate from the 14 affordable units, and are probably being paid for by some combination of federal, state, and city dollars. The affordable units were awarded by lottery open to anyone meeting the income guidelines. Also in official NYC-government-speak homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the street. It means a lack of "secure, adequate, and permanent" housing. So it includes situations like living in a shelter or in a doubled up situation (e.g. on a relative's couch).
- iamdave 10y ago
  Both very good things to know. Thanks for clearing up.

iLoch 10y ago

So, I lived in a micro apartment last year in Vancouver. Newly renovated like the one in this video, albeit with less features (no dishwasher or multi-purpose furniture.) The apartment shown in this video is a luxurious 300sqft. My "apartment" was smaller than this. While the space is acceptable, technically, to live in - I can't recommend it if you have the choice of a larger place. These sorts of places typically feature high ceilings, which is nice, but that's about all they have going for them. For me, coming home felt more like arriving at a hotel. With everything so tightly packed, there was a constant need to pack things away and shuffle items around. It's hard to feel at home when you can barely even (and possibly even not at all!) fit your own furniture in your place. Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom. I won't dispute this is a better living situation than many people currently have, but given the price tag of these apartments (I paid over $1000/mo here, $2500-3000 in Murray Hill for 300sqft???) I would advise finding somewhere else to live. Somewhere that has a doorway to walk through that separates your living spaces.

zyxley 10y ago
> Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom. That's exactly my thought. I'd rather just have a normal bed, save a couple of square feet of floor space, and maybe be able to cram in some more storage under or over it.
nine_k 10y ago
I think the whole point is being very close to whatever is attractive in Manhattan, at a price of both serious rent and small area. A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads. Otherwise, Brooklyn and Queens offer much more cost-effective, well-connected, entirely urban neighborhoods, maybe not as dense but still perfectly walkable, bikable, and equipped with subway. The cost is, of course, 20-40 more minutes to/from Manhattan.

carlob 10y ago

I have a friend in Paris who lives with his wife in 33 m^2 (355 sqft). Their apartment is not even technically a studio, but rather a 1BR, they routinely host dinner parties with up to 8-10 people. I've also heard people compliment them on the size of the apartment, they probably lived in places of about half the surface.

drivingmenuts 10y ago

I made it about a minute and couldn't take the reporter anymore - if you're going to do video, try to hire someone with more life than a dead carpet to do the speaking part. While she may be a fine writer, clearly, she isn't a presenter for video.

dang 10y ago
Please stop posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

KKKKkkkk1 10y ago

> “New York has long been a leader in social innovation,” Mr. Klinenberg said. “The trend of living alone happened here before anywhere else.” I don't understand. Check Bay Area Craigslist and you will find that a rich selection of small studios is available for rent on any given day. And they're much more affordable than the one in this article too.

srtjstjsj 10y ago
"Living alone" is more "social collapse" than "social innovation". But New York has long been a leader in social collapse.
Decade 10y ago
Apply to them and discover that most of the listings are spam.

lewisl9029 10y ago

Completely off-topic, but I'm curious what websites/services people here like to use to find a place for rent in the SF Bay Area.

shlant 10y ago
Even though we found our place on craigslist, be aware that 90% of postings are scams. In the City, you really need to remember the phrase "if it's too good to be true, it probably is".
- KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  I rented three times off Craigslist and have not had any trouble. I did respond to a couple of the ads that were "too good to be true" just for the heck of it. The poster came back with a request to wire them money, which was pretty obviously a scam. I wouldn't rent without seeing the place first so this was not a problem anyway. But if you're trying to rent sight-unseen, then you probably should use a service with more serious vetting.
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
In my experience, Craigslist is the primary source. Other websites that I looked at were at best a moderately out-of-date mirror of Craigslist.
- twblalock 10y ago
  I think what happens is that every property manager and landlord lists on Craigslist, as well as a few other places. Craigslist is pretty much a superset of all apartment ads in the area. Some of these other sites copy Craigslist, and some just have duplicate postings put there by the landlords.
twblalock 10y ago
I used Padmapper back when it had access to Craigslist data. Now, I just use Craigslist itself. So does everyone else I know. There aren't a lot of better options, aside from cold-calling apartment management companies. Everyone lists on Craigslist.

minikomi 10y ago

This is more roomy than many of my friend's apartments here in Tokyo. Different circumstances, I know, but just some perspective.

baddox 10y ago

Oh, that's a "micro apartment?" It looks the same size as my San Francisco Soma apartment, or perhaps slightly larger. I don't have any of the fancy specialized furniture either, so my queen sized bed, wardrobe, and desk take up most of the room.

castratikron 10y ago

Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

jonathantm 10y ago
something something multipass

teslaberry 10y ago

i lived in a 140 square foot apartment in new york which had formerly been a single room occupancy built over 100 years ago. small tenement like housing is nothing new. small apartments slowly create cabin fever-------ANXIETY. if you live in a small space you must spend a lot more time outside of it than inside of a normal sized space. also, it is vital to have minimum 9 foot high cielings for a small space. i had 8 foot ceilings that are standard in new york. finally, a loft in a room with lower than 10 foot cielings means you cannot have a 5'10 foot person stand comfortably underneath the loft and have a 5'10 foot person on their knees in bed on top of the loft without one of them hitting their head on the underside of either the celiing or the bottom of the loft. furthermore, a loft gets very hot in the summer and remains somewhat warmer than the floor in the winter. this effect increases inversely with measure of distance between the loft surface to the cieling

sologoub 10y ago

If they are serious about space efficiency, they should look at layouts Soviets developed to "warehouse" their citizen in - no luxury, but it really worked magic with efficiency. I grew up in 33 m^2 apartment. Layout is similar to this, minus the balcony: http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-cb300x198.jpeg http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-... The major difference is that you have a separation of space with the kitchen and hallway (with closets). That separation made it fairly livable for a family with a child! (Don't recommend stuffing a teenager in there, but it has been done...) The completely open studio layout will likely not be great even for a couple, as sometimes your really do need space or privacy. A blocked off kitchen affords that and doubles as a decent home office. I don't recall us resorting to space-efficient furniture, but then again Soviet furniture was smaller already and I did sleep on a foldout couch. For entertaining, that tiny kitchen actually fit 5-6 people reasonably well. I think our informal record was 14 (3 standing, rest comfortably seating). The kitchen became such a part of the culture as a place to sit down and talk privately, that there have been articles and books written about it. It really highlights the genius utility of that small extra space. Unfortunately, all I could find in English is a really terrible NPR article that shows a place you'd need a hasmat suit to enter as a "typical" Russian kitchen... Still the utility is amazing! EDIT: as discussed below, Tokyo calls such layout 1DK (with 2 rooms effectively, 2nd being the kitchen). These are much more desirable than the 1K true studio apartments.

alexeiz 10y ago
Say yes to Soviet-style apartments in Manhattan!
- sologoub 10y ago
  Oh hell no! But they are doing worse than that with these...
gambiting 10y ago
I was just about to comment, that this "apartment" is pretty much identical in size and layout to an apartment my parents got from the communist government of Poland in the 70s. It was small, but at least it was free - is $2400/month a common price in New York? I currently live in UK and pay $900/month for a detached 3 bedroom house, $2400/month is more than I make a month as a c++ programmer - just seems very very high to me. Edit: I do make more than $2400/month, I fudged the conversion rate

erikb 10y ago

3200? Did she say the cost for that apartment is 3200? First I thought I heard 320. That would be okay. It's the size of a university dorm room (at least where I live). 320 is an okay price for that. But 3200? There are a lot of places on that planet where you can rent a villa for less, a lot less.

geofft 10y ago
Yes, but the goal of building housing in New York City is for that housing to be in New York City, not anywhere else on the planet.
- erikb 10y ago
  You are aware that most people on this planet, even in highly developed countries, earn less pre tax than $3200, right?
  - geofft 10y ago
    Yes. Again, the goal here is building housing in Manhattan, not building housing for highly developed countries in general. People who aren't familiar with New York City (especially people whose impression of housing is influenced by San Francisco) may not realize that the city has a generally-competent public transit infrastructure, making is possible to work in Manhattan without living in Manhattan or even in New York City and without hating your life. Of course, housing in the outer boroughs and in nearby cities is also expensive compared to, say, housing in a small university town somewhere in the Midwest. But this project is specifically about increasing the density of housing in Manhattan itself, which will hopefully let demand from people who can pay $3200/month shift away from the outer boroughs and nearby cities.
    - erikb 10y ago
      You are right that my confusion is about the squaremeter price in NYC in general, not in this project specifically. That is exactly my point. I don't want to bring any other point. Why are we still arguing about this point?

cannonpr 10y ago

Seems like a very poor approach to space efficiency if compared to something like this http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in-hong-kong-transforms-into-24-rooms/ http://www.homedsgn.com/2011/05/07/a-tiny-apartment-in-hong-...

woodpanel 10y ago

It's a downer to me, that despite the stated aim of "keeping housing affordable", prices of such apartments will usually default to "still eating most of the household's income". Is this proof for too much or too less government intervention? Or is the usual increase in price caused by the new micro-renters themselves, in that they are increasing attractiveness of the area? I think it's most likely just that: We're bad savers and not being in the red at the end of the month will turn off the biggest behavioral signal for switching expenditure habits.

eru 10y ago
New York still has plenty of underdeveloped areas, ever in and really close to the centre of town. (Rent control is partially to blame here, I think. Zoning, too. But locals might be able to tell you more.) Overall, even with all of the city centre built up to 40 stories, you'll still see relatively high rent---the location is just too good to do business in; so people will bid it up. The Economist had a whole section about cities a while ago. It was in the issue that also had http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val...
redwood 10y ago
I think when folks focus on the price point of new construction being high, they're missing the bigger picture: These kinds of new units put downward price pressure on whatever was previously "lower on the totem pole". In other words, those studios in Murray Hill without a door man / elevator which were already priced below this price point will become even less luxurious looking as these are built.. that means that "regular folks" who don't care to live in these shiny shoe boxes prosper!
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  What your describing happened in the used car market c4c caused a panic that put the price floor of the bottom of the used car market in a place it couldn't have naturally got itself to. This put upward pressure on the entire market. It became much more profitable to have a bunch of higher end used (CPO, certified pre owned) cars lying around to sell. To churn those out better leases became more available. At the same time it became harder to write a housing loan that would obviously flop. Banks started writing more bad new car loans. The incentive to do so being that if it defaults soon enough the car will get repo'd, auctioned and bought by a dealer to be sold as certified pre owned and the loan is in the black at the end of it all. Go look at the average prices for various new/used vehicle categories and you'll see an upward trend everywhere. Allowing any part of the market to go upward in price puts upward pressure on the rest of the market because there's now more competition for whatever hasn't become out of reach. Housing, transportation, education and a few others are necessities that pretty much everyone needs the same amount of. Until you saturate the entire market in an area with high end stuff to the point where the price of the high end stuff decreases dramatically the price of low end stuff will rise. It's really hard to saturate the housing market with expensive and new because no developer will build more nice expensive stuff when there's a larger profit margin building cheaper low end stuff that's been driven up in price by all the high end stuff.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

I lived in an apartment smaller than this in Lausanne Switzerland. This seems like luxury in comparison (granted, mine only cost 800 CHF in rent but...).

barking 10y ago

I live in a rural location. I could not financially afford that micro apartment but I consider the people who live in it far worse off than me.

eru 10y ago
Depends on how much you value living in New York City.
- barking 10y ago
  That's true, I'm not the most sociable of people and a lot of what makes cities attractive is wasted on me. When I moved to the country it was the libraries and the bookshops I missed. Today with broadband and amazon, I don't miss those either.

NTripleOne 10y ago

This is like twice the size of the studio flat I rented while at university...

Steeeve 10y ago

New? I remember 300 square foot places for absurd money back in the 90s. How small/expensive are they getting exactly?

dagw 10y ago

"If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, "how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?" I take it this person doesn't cook. My first apartment (which was quite a bit smaller than this apparent) came with a two burner stove and no oven. With those two burners, a rice cooker and the small toaster style oven I bought, I quite comfortable cooked just about anything you'd care mention.

wwwdonohue 10y ago

> It’s also adorable, a compressed vision of the city in both ethos and mien. Imagine a "groovy millennial" Instagrammming a vegan cheesecake -- forever. I appreciate the job the NYT Real Estate section does. Without them (and Style) the newspaper probably would no longer exist. But articles like this are so devoid of reality that I understand why everyone thinks people are crazy to live in New York City.

chrisseaton 10y ago
In what sense is this article devoid of reality? This is a real apartment, really available to lease.

chrismbarr 10y ago

As a non New Yorker that price for the square footage is astronomical to me! I live in a small rural town in Georgia and I pay $890 a month to rent a 1618 sq foot house (+ a large front porch). The house is over 100 years old and it for sure has it's quirks, but for the price it's great. I can live in this house for 3-4 months for the cost of 1 month in that apartment which is about 1/5th the size! I know that New York salaries are typically higher to compensate, but I work remote for a company as a front-end designer/dev and make a good living without having to pay "big city" prices. I get the appeal of living in a big with though, Atlanta is near by and I love visiting; but I greatly prefer saving my money and/or spending it on things other than expensive rent.

cauterized 10y ago
Nah, that price per square foot is pretty high even by NYC standards (almost double what's typical for that neighborhood, which is expensive fore city as a whole but middle-high for Manhattan). And one of the things you learn here pretty quickly is that you don't REALLY need all that much space. My first apartment was about 300 sqft, and a third of it went entirely unused. My current studio is probably 450, and while I have a ton more stuff now than I did then, the amount of space is more than adequate. I wouldn't know what to do with 1600 sqft even with a spouse and kids! Oh, and costs about 2/3 as much as that apartment, in an arguably nicer neighborhood in Brooklyn. /shrug We each have our own priorities for what we're willing to pay for.

varjag 10y ago

The problem with multi-functional, stowaway etc furniture is it tends to fall apart pretty quick with daily use. In couple of years you'll have issues with engaging that table's feet in unfolded position, that neat wardrobe hanger will fall out on you when you open doors and so on. And it's not really a huge choice with this kind of furniture to replace.

Brakenshire 10y ago
The table looked very awkward. I actually previously had a solid wood IKEA table with two folding leaves and storage space in between, which cost about £200, and looked a lot more usable (and attractive) than that table. Admittedly you could only get 6 people round it rather than 8/10. But then again, it didn't cost £3000.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

Why is this a big deal? The mobile home and RV industries solved the problem of maximizing available space decades ago. The space spend on propane tanks, water heaters, and other utilities that are no needed at an apartment level can be repurposed having larger hardware in the kitchen and bathroom. I know it's bad marketing to say "we modify off the shelf manufactured home floor plans to better fit an apartment use case" but that's exactly what micro-apartments are. The same tricks just get applied in a different context. Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy but living in a 3 dimensional trailer park is? Well at least some writer made a buck off of writing about it.

chrisseaton 10y ago
Well you just wrote about it and even offered a different take on the story didn't you?
VLM 10y ago
>Living in a trailer isn't noteworthy It isn't cool. That's the problem. I listen to a podcast about a week ago (sorry forget all the details) on the general topic of how do you sell mobile home materials and economics and lifestyle to people who don't think mobile homes are "cool" especially not for "the cool people". Well, change the name, call it a tiny house or tiny apartment, all done. There is an interesting economic side issue. Because bubbles are bubbles we can assume real estate will go up 5% per year into infinity, right? That solves the classic problem with RV / mobile home trailer parks where the materials are not built to last more than a couple years... wait for real estate bubble appreciation to build up for five years, cash out refinance, then gut and remodel. Doesn't matter if nothing in there will last more than 10 years if the business model is to gut and remodel every 5... Of course if the financial situation changes and prices can't go up 5% annually in perpetuity, then imagine what the place will look like in 20, 30 years.

smackfu 10y ago

That expanding table is around four grand.

michael_h 10y ago
From the mouseovers in the graphic: * Wall bed: $7,780 * Coffee table: $1,450 * Expanding table: $4,165 * Folding chairs: $250/each ($1,000)

kafkaesq 10y ago

In a nutshell: they're re-inventing what was once a vast and thriving community (since substantially eviscerated) of what was were once widely known, amongst anybody above a certain age, as Single-Room Occupancy dwellings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy except now market-rate (natch!), and with decidedly cheesier architecture.