Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62%

https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...

https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-new-york-rent-tre...

If you look at the breakdown by bedroom count:

1BR: SF -> $3303 | NY -> $2939

2BR: SF -> $4481 | NY -> $3752

This makes clear that NY inventory is biased towards larger units, which makes comparisons of overall averages deceptive.

The closest I could find in terms of data was this site- https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/us-average-apart... which compares SF to all of NYC, not Manhattan. The studios are somewhat bigger, the 1BRs slightly smaller, and the 2BRs are on average slightly larger- but the difference is very small.

Price per square foot would shed more light on this, but I don't know of a reliable (free) source of that data.

What's living in Hayward like?

You can see some more accurate stats here: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/24/16925172/nyc-rent-2017-decre...

But, go to the SF burbs and try to find high rises... :/

There are plenty of rent stabilized apartments in NYC, but that's a much different and weaker thing, and isn't comparable to rent control in SF.

I remember getting out of college in 2005, hearing about the $3000+ 1BR apartments in NYC, and thinking "Why the hell would anyone want to move to NYC?" (I was living with my parents in Boston at the time, but looked at moving out and would've paid $650 with roommates or about $1100 for a 1BR in that city.) My now-wife was living in SF that same year and paid $1200 in rent.

The huge increases in SF rent happened mostly from 2010-2015. I paid $1400/month for a 1BR in 2009-2010 (Mountain View, not SF, but SF was still < $2000 at the time). By 2014 it was basically impossible to find something < $3000 in any transit-accessible part of the city, and apparently it's leveled off since.

Also don't forget Long Island, the Other In State.

(I'm one of the idiots who commutes ~2 hours from near Poughkeepsie, which is (a) still on commuter rail [the super-express Hudson line train takes ~90 minutes, plus the time to get to & from it] and (b) where half of the food you find in NYC farmer's markets comes from. I kinda like it.)

My personal limit is 12-13 hours out of the house each day; more than that and it burns me out fast. It definitely wouldn't work for me with an employer who was less flexible about when the work day starts or who had expectations of large numbers of hours spent with butt in chair.

For me, I didn't really take advantage of the city - I like occasionally went to a museum or went out to eat but I mostly just sat on the couch watching TV and surfing the internet. So I moved north and got myself forty acres of tree-covered Bath-Nassau soil with rocky outcroppings. Now my free time is filled with rennovating a 200 year old vernacular house, turning my land into a proper hobby farm, and going to various kitschy festivals and hiking trails with my family. My commute is, frankly, the most relaxing part of my week, where I can sit quietly for 90 minutes and read a book or take a nap or post WoT conspiracy theories on Reddit.

It may not be for everyone, but it's amazing to me that I can have this lifestyle while also commuting to a regular old desk job in the largest city in the country. (It's also amazing to me that I'm part of a multi-century tradition of both commuting to the city from rural upstate and of gentleman farmers coming upstate from the city.)

The train ride from Harrison to Grand Central alone is somewhere around 45 minutes. And unless you work right at Grand Central, you're looking at rushing to make connecting trains. Doing this for a week while exploring the city was fine, but the idea of having to do this every single day until I retire just to make a living would make me want to blow my brains out.

I don't know how my cousin does it. She works in the financial district and takes a 6am train into the city every day. When she gets home, she has just enough time to put her kids to bed before passing out. Now I understand why her husband has a WFH job.

And about that "great family home" thing... the housing stock is so old that every house, even the nice ones, is going to be a fixer-upper. Not long before I got there, they had a plumbing joint break in one of the upstairs bathrooms. Within a few minutes, it wrecked the fixtures in that bathroom, obliterated the ceiling of the kitchen it was above, and did a number on the kitchen counters.

I'm also generally not a fan of how the suburbs are laid out either. Houses are spaced so far apart that it feels like you're living in the country even though you're close to the city (I went trick-or-treating with their kids, and I had to force myself to not brag that my hauls when I was their age were twice as big as theirs because I got to visit twice as many houses in the same amount of time :), and the street layout is twisty nonsense where even the major roads only have two lanes.

No thank you.

I'll gladly visit NYC again (and I'm sad my trip was only one week and not two), but I never want to live there. I'm happy living in Dallas, though I'm considering a move to Las Vegas for political reasons. Either way, both of those are polar opposites of the NYC suburbs.

https://goo.gl/maps/DYvaWBSLFcP2 1h15m from Rye train station to Fulton subway station on a Tue morning

https://goo.gl/maps/TdQN5FhWF132 55m from Pelham station to Fulton subway.

So door to door, you're still looking at 70 min to 90 min commute one way, with the added stress of possibly dealing with train delays. I wouldn't be able to do that more than a couple years.

My point is, if you want a door to door commute of sub 45 min, consistently, then you would need to be in Hoboken/Jersey City/Secaucus/Weehawken/etc. That whole Hudson County corridor doesn't offer much in the way of decent gyms (swimming pools, racquetball/squash courts, basketball, etc), and neither does it have any decent hiking. People don't really have yards there either.

If you move out of that circle, you do start getting some amenities, but your commute starts looking like 45 to 60+min, and you have to park your car at the train station or get dropped off, etc. It's all personal preference, but for me, I would want all the benefits of owning a car, or all the benefits of not needing to own a car. Living in NJ and working in NYC seems like compromising on both.