One thing, not immediately clear from those averages, is that apartments in Manhattan tend to be larger than those in SF.

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.

Do you have any data to support this? I am not being argumentative, I just found that from personal experience the opposite was true- that total rent tended to be higher in SF, but the apartments tended to be larger, at least than those in Manhattan. It seemed to me that SF was slightly cheaper per sq ft, with many more houses having access to outdoor space.

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.

I'm going just by the bedroom counts listed on that website. It's possible that those numbers are also deceptive because square footage per bedroom is sufficiently different. I was mainly remarking that the breakdown seems to indicate that NY inventory is biased towards 2BR apartments while SF inventory is biased towards 1BR. This is based merely on the fact that the SF overall average is much closer to the SF 1BR average while the NY overall average is much closer to the NY 2BR average.

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

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

If you count the opportunity cost of the time, stress, and money you spend using NJTransit to commute into Manhattan, and especially if you’re commuting further into other boroughs, the tax savings of NJ turn into losses.

100% Agree. It's very easy to underestimate the additional pain of commuting from NJ (unless you are talking about Jersey City or Hoboken), especially if you own a home and are paying NJ property taxes.

Lots of people live in Jersey City and take the PATH, which is a faster, cheaper, and more reliable commute than NJT. They still avoid NYC city tax and get cheaper and nicer apartments though.

Yes, Hobo/JC if you're near the Path station is an exception. But it doesn't apply to many people commuting into NYC.

There's other ways into NYC from NJ that aren't the train. There are many ferry options along the hudson, and nothern shore area has a commuter ferry that is 40 minutes to Wall St.

I live in NJ, and from 2006-2010 worked in WFC near Wall Street...While the ferry option is nice and pleasant, it used to cost about 2.5~3 times MORE expensive than the PATH train (the "subway' that connects both sides of the Hudson). Also, the duration of the commute gets cut down only about 1.5~2 minutes (as compared to when the PATH is running without delays). Overall, not really sustainable - neither in time nor money. Though, as a tourist, yeah, the ferry is nice for its views of the skyline. ;-)

I've used the ferry a handful of times to take my bike in, but it definitely caters to a very specific clientele. It's simply not worth it unless you live right there or work right where it lets off.

Yes, the strip of land from Jersey City to Edgewater is an exception in terms of travel time, but that doesn't apply to many NJ to NYC commuters.

You can also get a 2BR less than one hour's commute away from San Francisco for under $2000 / month.

A transit commute?

Yes, my commute from South Hayward to Embarcadero station in SF was 45 minutes, I used BART (obviously), and rent was under $2000.

Is it possible to do this without a car, though? Because in NYC you don't need a car even to live an hour away on transit, and a car is a pretty substantial monthly expense.

Yes, it's possible to do it without a car. See my cousin comment.

I'm not just referring to the commute though, I mean is the neighborhood you're living in itself built around not requiring a car? I live in a dense part of Manhattan where the majority of people don't own vehicles and most needs can be fulfilled simply by walking a few blocks; is this true of South Hayward?

None of the tech jobs are in San Francisco. Unlike most cities, people live in SF/Oakland and commute to the suburbs in Mountain View and Palo Alto to work, and that commute is closer to two hours door to door.

where?

Hayward.

Wow, I looked it up and you're right. Thanks for the info.

What's living in Hayward like?

It seemed quietly beautiful to me. Very nice scenery and otherwise typically suburban? The local hispanic population is large; I walked up into the hills once and found an impressive park, filled with people none of whom were speaking English.

Those stats about NYC are, quite frankly, incorrect. I have no idea where they got that garbage data from, but it's garbage. Housing stock was massively added to over the past year and the market has actually gotten friendlier to renters, with many buildings offering one month free rent to entice renters.

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

The difference is a reasonable transit ride puts you in the radius of a staggeringly large amount of housing stock comparatively in NYC.

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

Both NYC and SF are rent controlled areas. Rent control is cancer that punishes younger and newer inhabitants while making rent cheap for the rich. In fact, NYC has more vacant apartments than homeless people.

Rent control is much less of a thing in NYC than it is in SF. There are only 27k rent controlled apartments in all of NYC (with its >8M population). More info here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/rentguidelinesboard/resources/rent...

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.

If NYC is currently at $3634 then yes, NYC has done much better than 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.

You can live in many places that are not New York City and have a reasonably timely public transit commute into it.

New York City is huge though. To live in a place that isn’t NYC while still in state means Yonkers or White Plains. Reasonable commute is like an hour, maybe more.

Eh, you can get to dense suburbia in about 45 minutes, sparse suburbia in like 1 hour, and if you're willing to commute 90 minutes, maybe two hours, you're out in what city slickers would call "rural".

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.)

I tried commuting from Poughkeepsie (well, that odd stop one stop south) during the dotcom 90s and it nearly killed me. The train was fine, but that final 30 minutes on the subway downtown just pushed it over the edge. Gave up after six months. If you can manage it and keep to sane working hours (I was working 9:30 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. routinely) keep doing it.

Yeah, I mostly agree; I did Metro North for a couple of years before switching to Amtrak. It's less flexible and a little more expensive than Metro North, but the train is usually faster and it drops you off by Penn Station which is a pleasant walk to the Google office (and like 5 minutes by subway if you don't feel like a pleasant walk).

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.

I know from my stint on Crouton on Hudson, but its still a pain. You don't truly live in the city, you just visit it from time to time.

You're definitely not living in the city and it's certainly not for everyone.

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.)