6 ms·
Is it the wages or that shitty one bedroom apartments go for $2000+
by gonzalohm 4mo ago
Is it the wages or that shitty one bedroom apartments go for $2000+
- foolfoolz 4mo agoone bedroom (and living alone) is a luxury and always has been
- MSFT_Edging 4mo agoMany localities will have co-living restrictions for single-family homes.
- cpburns2009 4mo agoApartments exist everywhere with a population over 100. Does no one rent an apartment with roommates anymore?
- llbbdd 4mo agoThey avoid it because it sucks
- nullorempty 4mo agoNot true. Rent for one bedroom apartment was 500$ in 1998, cold / hot water included other utilities are extra. I was making 35K back then and it was enough to afford relatively good living - car, groceries, gas, occasional meal for 2 at a restaurant. And gas was 35cents on the Wet Coast of Canada.
- rafram 4mo ago$35,000 in 1998 is $72,500 in 2026, which is still a totally fine income. I know people living pretty well on that in New York City.
- nullorempty 4mo agowell, if one bedroom now goes for 2000$ that's x4 increase where as the 72K vs 35K is only x2 increase So, no, your math doesn't work.
- rafram 4mo agoWho said a one-bedroom is $2,000?
- nullorempty 4mo agoI'd say at least 2K. But the poster above says it's over 3K.
- rafram 4mo agoThe poster above was quoting the median for all apartments in New York City, the (second-?)most expensive market in the country. Nationally it’s about $1,600 for a 1br: https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/us/ https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/us/
- nullorempty 4mo agoYou mentioned NY - logical to look at NY then no?
- john_strinlai 4mo ago>I know people living pretty well on that in New York City. median asking rent in 2026 for NYC is $3616/mo ($43,392/yr) meaning rent alone would be 60% of that income, assuming that the $72.5k figure is after taxes (which it probably isnt). if you take taxes off, you're probably at like 55-60k. that means rent alone is 70%-77% of income! "living pretty well"?
- rafram 4mo agoYes, because you really don't have to pay that much. Those expensive apartments go to people who aren't very price sensitive (either because they actually have the money, or because they want to live it up in their 20s/30s and are spending beyond their means) or who are willing to live with enough roommates to make it affordable. If all you can find is a $3.5k unit, you'll need to get a roommate. But you can find better if you put in the work and look beyond StreetEasy. The median household income in New York City is only $81,000 per year! People make it work!
- api 4mo agoStop this race to the bottom stuff. You know what else is a luxury and always has been? HVAC, transportation, anything beyond maybe emergency medicine, Internet access, education, drinkable tap water, … The fact that the bulk of the US population has these things is what makes us a first world country.
- pocksuppet 4mo agoActually the US is a first-world country because it's allied with the US. Russia is a second-world country because it's allied with Russia, and Switzerland is a third-world country because it's allied with neither.
- gravypod 4mo agoIs this true? I think SROs were very common in the US in metropolitan areas. It was common plot point in media to: 1) kick your kids out at 18, 2) if two men lived together they were assumed to be dating.
- bglusman 4mo agoI think SRO's are very different from "One bedrooms" and even from studios? a studio or a one bedroom has a kitchen, a bathroom, and some living space... I think SRO's typically have a bed, a chair, and sometimes a desk. Bathrooms were shared, I'm not sure how kitchen/cooking space worked?
- littlexsparkee 4mo agoyep, a ton of SROs have been lost in cities like SF https://ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/ https://ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/ also - gentrification of apartment housing stock over time raising the price floor and phasing out of public housing
- sethjgore 4mo agoI would think greed is a luxury and always has been, more than a simple adobe and living alone.
- antonvs 4mo agoWhy not both? Wages are too low and rents are too high. The common factor: the capital class screwing over the working class.
- ajmurmann 4mo agoLook at real, median household income. It's been going up and up. The things that have gone up in relative cost are housing (because we heavily regulate building it) and premium services like healthcare and education because of Baumol.
- mrweasel 4mo agoProbably also doesn't help that to many people want/need to live in the same few areas. If you could take your office job (which in most cases would work perfectly fine) and move to a less popular area, 30% might be rather high.
- ghaff 4mo agoThat's the thing or at least one thing. These discussions aren't about most small towns and cities in the Midwest. They're about prime areas on the coasts for the most part. Heck where I live about an hour west of Boston/Cambridge is a lot cheaper than the metro itself for the most part.
- TimorousBestie 4mo agoHousing prices in the Midwest have also inflated greatly.
- NDlurker 4mo agoI'm paying 28% of my net income for rent and utilities on a one bedroom apartment. I could find a cheaper place too and it would be just as nice, just not in as desirable part of town. Not sure I'll ever be able to afford a house though.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
- bruce343434 4mo ago“I have seen people technically meet the 30% rule and still feel financially strained,” shares Linda Grizely, a certified financial planner and financial wellness speaker. “The pressure isn’t the rent alone; it’s the combination of rent plus everything else in their financial life."
- gravypod 4mo agoIn 1970 a $300/month apartment would be ~$2000/month in today dollars. I do think rents are too high as productivity and supply chains are much more efficient. I think in the 70s we were still using black pipe for gas, iron septic lines, and copper pipes for water. But, I don't think new builds or renovations are cheaper inflation adjusted (harder to estimate). Cost of money (inflation), building, and maintenance is the floor for rents.
- selfmodruntime 4mo agoThe 1970's median salary was $800 (so rent was 37%), the 2026 equivalent is $5220 or 49%.
- forshaper 4mo agoIncidentally, the 1970s are when productivity kept rising, but typical worker pay stopped rising with it.
- bantunes 4mo agoHow many apartments were $300/m in 1970?
- datadrivenangel 4mo agoProbably not many. The median rent reported in the census was 108. Per state breakouts: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/tables/time-series/coh-grossrents/grossrents-unadj.txt https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/tables/ti...
- jmclnx 4mo agoVery few, 300 USD was considered rather high in my area back then, maybe a house would be 300. That area is now in the top 5 expensive areas to rent. In the late 80s early 90s I was paying 350 USD for a 2 bedroom.
- Spooky23 4mo agoMy parents bought the home we grew up in, which is located middle of Queens/NYC for ~$30k around 1977/8. It sold most recently for $3M. Rents were typically well under $300mo. $150 in not so great areas. That was a high inflation time though. Today, I live in a small city in a house I bought for about $200k 20 years ago. IIRC, it sold for $80k around 1992. Worth about $450k today. A decent 2BR apartment rents for like $2k here, a nice one >$2700.
- api 4mo agoIt’s that wages have not risen with inflation.
- vorpalhex 4mo agoAside from less than a quarter point (0.24) from Covid, wages have in fact risen with inflation and that small difference is also likely to disppear soon. https://usafacts.org/answers/are-wages-keeping-up-with-inflation/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/are-wages-keeping-up-with-infla... It is in fact rents, especially with mandatory add-ons. The actual cost of renting a place is a lot more than the direct rent payment.
- sethjgore 4mo agoFrankly the statistics do not feel right - I remember jobs that were easily found at $15 per hour in 2012 and cost of everything was insanely low. One bedroom / 750, McDonald burger, $1, McDonald soda $1, a pack of beer $7. Now eveything is easily double or triple and the basic jobs are still at $15.
- bee_rider 4mo agoThat’s a sort of interesting question. On one hand, landlords are easy to resent, they extract a lot of income primarily by owning something rather than doing anything productive. On the other hand, wages haven’t kept up with inflation and the super-wealthy are constantly capturing more of the value. At least in the case of small-scale landlords, maybe they are just the only lower-to-middle class people who’ve managed to defend the deal they had in the 90’s, proportionally speaking…
- shlant 4mo agoAre you saying that you blame apartment prices on landlords? If you build more apartments then market rent goes down and landlords can't charge more if people can just find cheaper apartments. It's not like landlords just choose whatever price they want - it's significantly bound by the demand.
- hgoel 4mo agoIt's largely landlords causing trouble building housing where it's needed because it would limit how much they can make.
- shlant 4mo agoare you referring to NIMBY homeowners? because yes, people who own houses are the most likely to prevent more housing from being built (although not the only reason more housing isn't being built)
- hgoel 4mo agoYep, referring to NIMBYs.
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoLandlords don't care. You put a 5/1 beside their slum and they're ecstatic because that means the land under their slum is now worth "build a 5/1 here" money.
- MiscCompFacts 4mo agoListening to NPR yesterday, they mentioned it’s a renters’ market in the Sunbelt [1]. Lots of new supply here in Texas and I just signed a lease recently with 2 months free in DFW. Bringing me down to ~$1550/month. Lots of places are offering 2-3 months for free. [1] https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/tx/ https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/tx/
- alphawhisky 4mo ago$1,550 a month for what? A three bedroom, 1.5 bath duplex with a garage maybe. For a flat though? Shoot me.
- littlexsparkee 4mo agoH1-B crackdown is cooling the housing market in cities like Dallas https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48399957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48399957
- HumblyTossed 4mo agoCan both be true?
- littlexsparkee 4mo agodual income expectations raising costs for everyone, plus work culture necessitating clustering in metros - everything conspires against affordability