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My daughter has lived in Brooklyn since she graduated from an Ivy, class of 2011. She has a liberal arts degree. She found a job where she started in the mid 30

My daughter has lived in Brooklyn since she graduated from an Ivy, class of 2011. She has a liberal arts degree. She found a job where she started in the mid 30’s. After two and a half years she’s broken 40 but not by much. She works about 60 hours a week. Her last review made her a manager so she gets no overtime. She works in an industry that caters to luxury so the company is setting income records. The money is all flowing to the top. It’s an employers market and the starting salary the company now offers is lower then it was when she started because there are so many college graduates looking for anything resembling a job. She lived in Park Slope for the first two years, sharing a two bedroom, fifth floor walkup, attic apartment. The entire apartment was maybe 20 x 20 ft with a good part of it of limited use due to the slant of the roof. Rent was $1,500 a month including utilities. It was a great neighborhood though and she really enjoyed her time there. The apartment building was sold to a luxury developer and the rent was raised to $2,300 a month. The new owners really just wanted the building empty so they could gut it and change it to luxury apartments. We walked by there this past weekend and the place was boarded up. Her new apartment is a legitimate two bedroom in a clean but very old building on the edges of Boerum Hill. The neighborhood is okay but you need to be aware that two blocks away it starts get dodgy very quickly. The rent is $2,200 + utilities. Her and her apartment mate looked for two months to find the apartment. It was the only thing they could find that was affordable but wasn’t a filthy dump. The leases on the old and new places overlapped by a month and a half but they had to look early because the inventory is so limited. Real estate in NYC has gone crazy. Manhattan prices are driven by international buyers looking for a place that’s safe. One bedroom apartments in Manhattan for less than a million are becoming scarce according to the NYT. Brooklyn is priced at what Manhattan was a couple of years ago. The downtown area of Brooklyn has been very popular because of the availability of mass transit to get people into their jobs in Manhattan. As you move out from downtown Brooklyn the commute time increases quickly as subway lines spread out and express trains make less frequent stops. Two to three hours a day on a subway commute becomes old very quickly. NYC is a great place but unless you have some equity in the place you work you’re very likely not going to be able to afford to have the life you think is waiting for you there.

wil421 12y ago
I am paying about $1400 in rent/utilities a month outside Atlanta for a 3/2 plus 2 living rooms on over a acre of fenced in land with a storage shed. Its right in one of the best school districts and one of the top High Schools in the state. A friend of mine recently visited from NYC and remarked about how he is paying $3000 for a place in Manhattan with one room. I couldnt imagine living in a building taking an elevator to my place. Cant have pets and he can barely have people over to sit down. From the stories I hear about SF and NYC, I am probably never going to move to either.
- gdilla 12y ago
  I don't know. Living in NYC has taught me to make-do with less stuff. Storage space and closets are at a premium here. One thing that is great, I don't buy things to keep in the house, like books, or stuff from Amazon without really thinking hard about it, or if I know I can resell it/give it away later. In California, i would just go to target if i needed something.. there was always somewhere in the apt to keep/store it.
- _delirium 12y ago
  > I couldnt imagine living in a building taking an elevator to my place. I suppose different people have different preferences. I couldn't imagine stepping out of my door and having literally nothing interesting (not even a grocery store or coffee shop!) in walking distance. Or rather, I can imagine it, because I grew up in suburbia, but I can't imagine wanting to move back. Just feels way too isolated being so far from everything and unable to do even the simplest things without driving. Of course, I don't personally take the elevator, rather the stairs, because my building has no elevator. :D
gerbal 12y ago
She should move almost anywhere else. In one of the most expensive parts of North Carolina, a one bed room appartment rents for ~$600 a month, and $30K isn't a lot, but it's enough to live reasonably comfortably.
grrrando 12y ago
Three hours a day on the subway from almost anywhere in Brooklyn to almost anywhere in Manhattan is a stretch. I commute from Bay Ridge - the far end of the "R" line in Brooklyn, and not express - to Little Italy, daily. Door-to-door, the commute is about 45 minutes. My rent is under $1600 for a large 1BR in an elevator building with laundry. Coming from Philadelphia, where I lived in a 2BR HOUSE with a yard and all the amenities for $400/mo less, there was some sticker shock. But when you get to it, there's a lot more opportunity, a lot more options, a lot more of...everything. New York is about "a lot". That's what you pay for. People seem to be unwilling to explore neighborhoods outside of a 20-minute ride to down/midtown hotspots, which reasonably cost considerably more. If you can stomach an extra 10-20m on the subway you can find very livable rents in good neighborhoods.

wil421 12y ago

I am paying about $1400 in rent/utilities a month outside Atlanta for a 3/2 plus 2 living rooms on over a acre of fenced in land with a storage shed. Its right in one of the best school districts and one of the top High Schools in the state. A friend of mine recently visited from NYC and remarked about how he is paying $3000 for a place in Manhattan with one room. I couldnt imagine living in a building taking an elevator to my place. Cant have pets and he can barely have people over to sit down. From the stories I hear about SF and NYC, I am probably never going to move to either.

gdilla 12y ago
I don't know. Living in NYC has taught me to make-do with less stuff. Storage space and closets are at a premium here. One thing that is great, I don't buy things to keep in the house, like books, or stuff from Amazon without really thinking hard about it, or if I know I can resell it/give it away later. In California, i would just go to target if i needed something.. there was always somewhere in the apt to keep/store it.
_delirium 12y ago
> I couldnt imagine living in a building taking an elevator to my place. I suppose different people have different preferences. I couldn't imagine stepping out of my door and having literally nothing interesting (not even a grocery store or coffee shop!) in walking distance. Or rather, I can imagine it, because I grew up in suburbia, but I can't imagine wanting to move back. Just feels way too isolated being so far from everything and unable to do even the simplest things without driving. Of course, I don't personally take the elevator, rather the stairs, because my building has no elevator. :D

gerbal 12y ago

She should move almost anywhere else. In one of the most expensive parts of North Carolina, a one bed room appartment rents for ~$600 a month, and $30K isn't a lot, but it's enough to live reasonably comfortably.

grrrando 12y ago

Three hours a day on the subway from almost anywhere in Brooklyn to almost anywhere in Manhattan is a stretch. I commute from Bay Ridge - the far end of the "R" line in Brooklyn, and not express - to Little Italy, daily. Door-to-door, the commute is about 45 minutes. My rent is under $1600 for a large 1BR in an elevator building with laundry. Coming from Philadelphia, where I lived in a 2BR HOUSE with a yard and all the amenities for $400/mo less, there was some sticker shock. But when you get to it, there's a lot more opportunity, a lot more options, a lot more of...everything. New York is about "a lot". That's what you pay for. People seem to be unwilling to explore neighborhoods outside of a 20-minute ride to down/midtown hotspots, which reasonably cost considerably more. If you can stomach an extra 10-20m on the subway you can find very livable rents in good neighborhoods.