I've said it many times: this is one area where NYC is so much better off than, say, the Bay Area. In NYC you have an ultra-wealthy enclave around Central Park

I've said it many times: this is one area where NYC is so much better off than, say, the Bay Area. In NYC you have an ultra-wealthy enclave around Central Park and pretty much the rest of Manhattan really requires winning an affordable housing lottery, being an incumbent or being in the top 10%. That might seem like a problem but it's not. Or at least not a huge one. Why? Because there are affordable options within reasonable distance with public transit (eg NJ, Queens, the Bronx). Compare this to the Bay Area where there's really nowhere affordable to live. So rents here are a proxy for property values. The author is right that property values have a natural ceiling but that's in the macro sense. There can be (and are) enclaves that are only the domain of the rich (eg lower CPW, CPS, 5th on the Park). This sort of thing tends to have a flow on effect which is why gentrification tends to radiate outwards. So you end up with a situation where you can buy an apartment on 57th for $100m and 30 minutes away you can buy one in Queens for $150k. That's actually a pretty healthy situation (IMHO). It also means that property values in Manhattan, for example, still potentially have a huge amount of upside.