For what it's worth, I lived 7 or 8 places in about two years when I lived in NYC, in pretty much every Brooklyn neighborhood within a 20-40 minute radius from where I worked. Saved lots of money too - never lived alone, did social stuff in my neighborhood, took full advantage of the City to the best of my ability. After all that, I came to the following verdict: NYC is stupidly overpriced and has a substantial quality of life problem.
I am admittedly a non-native, so perhaps some of the finer charms of the City will always be lost on me. But I don't know - I'm living in Berlin right now, which isn't _too_ drastically different, and can't say I find myself missing NYC at all.
My washer and dryer are enormous, I have a car, and I live 5 minutes from the interstate on a beautiful wooded property with faster internet than I ever had in New York.
I am originally from NYC and I think the time to buy a house there was around the 1980s. If you have no hope of affording a good property there now in 2018, you have no business living in NYC because you are on the wrong side of the trade there. All of your surplus is going to be captured by the hyper successful alliance of landlords and the government. Renters are just asking to be tag team bodyslammed. Every time you get a raise, your landlord also will give himself a raise.
That's exactly where I would move to if I had to leave my place in midtown.
Many who complain about high rents, and feeling poor, for reasons I do not entirely understand, have a stigma of living in the other boroughs other than Manhattan.
In Queens, in a well connected (express subway line) area, one can get the same 400 sqft "dump" the author cites, for less than 1000$. And commute-wise, about 30 minutes to midtown.
Having lived both in Queens and Manhattan over many years, I find this "Manhattan or broke" attitude with largely people who move from outside NYC.
I moved to Manhattan from Queens, when I was able to afford it and not when it became affordable.
However, PATH is meandering near the border of MTA's hellish confines and looks drunk enough to stumble in. Couple that with the incessant development (there are 4 towers in constructions near Paulus hook) and already stressed PATH infra and you can guess what can happen next.
On the whole, JC is better than BK for a myriad of reasons.
Overcrowding is certainly an issue and while I know there are some capacity improvements in progress (CBTC signaling, more cars), I have never seen a clear timeline from the PA as to when more capacity will actually happen.
I'm trying to decide if this is a tongue-in-cheek post or not.
* Dishwasher is much more common these days.
* In-unit laundry: Sometimes you'll find an in-unit washer, but no dryer. If there is an in-unit dryer, you have to ask whether it's a 110V electric or a true 220V vented. If it's the former, lower end models can take up to 4 hours to dry a small load. We had an in-unit washer, but just hung our clothes to dry and saved money instead of buying an in-unit dryer. Often times, you'll have no washer or dryer and simply take your laundry to a neighborhood coin-operated laundromat. If you're lucky, you might have coin-operated laundry facilities in the building.
* Central air is still a rarity. Most of the older housing (i.e. apartment) stock use radiator heating and window AC units.
"There are $100k used cars, many with functioning windows, heaters, and airbags!"
Yeah, but those metro areas are where the good income opportunities are disproportionately located.
Your "daily grind" doesn't have to happen at the same time as everyone else's. If the cramped subway bothers you, commute before (almost everyone can do this) or after (maybe not everyone can do this one though) the on-peak hours.
NYC is an expensive and densely populated city to live in. Your quality of life hinges on the set of compromises you make, which are unique to the city and have a higher impact on your day-to-day. Some people don't like to make compromises and decisions that affect their everyday lives to this degree, and that's fine. But to pretend that options don't exist is ridiculous.
My commute time ranged anywhere from 50 minutes to 2 and a half hours, each way, every day...more often towards the latter end of that spectrum. The situation of riding the yellow line to/from Brooklyn is atrocious and not something that I plan to subject myself to again.
In 2011, I rented a 2-bedroom apartment next to the beautiful Prospect park, within a trivial walking distance to 2 subway lines, 30 mins by train to my office in Manhattan, for $1500.
It's not a posh neighborhood, but I don't care.
You can always trade off commute time or access to jobs and culture for lower rent. It’s pointless to complain about more desirable cities being more expensive; if you want to live in a popular area it’s going to cost you more.
I own a newer construction 2Br condo in midtown Atlanta with a 24-hour doorman, pool, dedicated parking, and skyline views and my monthly payment including HOA is about $1300. Brand new 2Br apartments in the building next door start around $1700. Just some more anecdata.
Basically, you have ridiculous standards if you think Prospect Park is crappy, and your price expectations are irrational. Even you admit that your next-door neighbors will be getting roughly the same deal...but they’ll be in Atlanta, not NYC. It’s fine if you don’t like NYC, but you seem to have trouble accepting that a great many people do like it enough to pay more for it.
Also, let’s talk about moving the goalposts: you’re comparing ownership and renting as if they’re the same thing.
I just took a 2-week vacation in Bavaria, and indeed, the rampant smoking was shocking to me as an American. However, I did not see it inside, only outside. It was especially annoying when I wanted to look at a restaurant's menu outside and some idiot with a cigarette was standing in the doorway; I just went by and found another restaurant when that happened. I saw tons of people (usually male) smoking outside right next to doorways, in entranceways, on the sidewalks, etc., many times in the rain and cold. The level of cigarette smoking, plus the poor city air quality due to all the diesel cars, really made me question if I could stand living in Germany any time in the next 20 years (probably about as long as it'll take to become more like America now).
However, I did not once see anyone smoking indoors, and it seemed to be illegal in public places from what I could tell. Are things different in Berlin?
I had to leave some places because it was so unbearable.
Personally, I was really annoyed by all the smoking on streets in Munich and Nuremberg, but again I didn't see it inside.
My previous Sunset Park apartment, of just one bedroom, raised its rent to over $2000 before I moved out. Sunset Park, unless you live close to 8th Avenue, is not even that nice or quiet of a neighborhood to live in.
Because Sunset Park has a) high home ownership rates and b) tons of apartment exclusive to the Chinese community, it's actually not a very cheap place to live in. Or perhaps that's just how expensive NYC is now.
I've chosen to move to a nicer neighborhood next year because if I'm going to pay $2000-2400 I'd rather live closer to Manhattan, even if the apartment is smaller.
The best argument is for kids, but for me and many (most) of my peers at least, that's the last thing we want. I'd also argue that raising children in the South/MidWest does them a great disservice in terms of cut potential in education and career prospects but that's neither here nor there.
With my tech friends, they seem to be able to live ridiculously minimally as their life outside of the essentials fits into a laptop/desktop. My non-tech friends are less so.
Some activities that like having more space are as follows. Sure, most on this list are available via affordable to semi-luxurious subscriptions and/or coops or definitely can be done in a small space, yet having a personal version of it or additional space offers a decent QoL improvement in the form of time saved, or simply not having to share space/equipment with family/strangers.
- Gym Equipments (powerrack, barbells, etc)
- Sauna
- Gardening
- Music (neighbors don't complain about your noise)
- Crafts
- Wood/Metal working
- Cooking/Baking
- Pets
- Art Studio (ceramics, painting, drawing, etc)
- Automotive
The mere fact that they can afford to live in a 1-bedroom in the EV is, well, evidence against that fact. You're not even part of the underclass in Manhattan if you can do that.
If you call yourself part of the underclass, either you're: Forgetting that they exist, or you're pretending that your economic situation is somehow roughly equivalent. I don't think you need to keep that on your mind every single second of the day, but at least be honest about it.
For instance, New York City made significant efforts to include a large number of affordable housing in many recent developments. People within a certain income range(30-100k ish) can apply for these apartments at a significantly reduced rent. This allows people who work middle-income jobs to at least live close to work. I'm not arguing the against the merits of these programs as I think income diversity is good, but this combined with the reality that many new developments included mainly luxury units or affordable units without much in-between, causes a significant rent burden for many New Yorkers making 100-200k.
Contrast that to say taking a 15% salary reduction to live in Nashville, that same person now probably lives much more like the upper-class of Nashville than the lower class.
When I first got that apartment in 2001, my rent was $900 and when I finally left after 11 years, my rent was $1,350. I loved that little apartment, the neighborhood - which has barely changed since, and my neighbors. I was truly sad to leave it.
I've been trying to convince other friends who moved to NYC to stop complaining about rent and join the common folk in the other boroughs, some of whom never left Manhattan except to head to and from the airport. I can't imagine what NYC looks like from that perspective, but I'm positive it's a lesser view.
I don't think it makes sense to live in New York unless there is something you can only get here. There's only one MoMA, one City Ballet, one Film Forum. (Not to mention the business and professional opportunities - the city is a business city first and foremost.)
As with anything else, there are compromises to be made, and NYC has a unique set of them. If you really think this way, go ahead and live in a densely populated neighborhood with the compromises that come along with it.
For what it's worth, I commute before/after on-peak hours to avoid delays. The subway is very efficient at 7am-7:30am, and is a shitshow at 9am when everyone is trying to get to their 10am start job. Then everyone complains about the delays, as if they can't make changes to their schedule when they _know_ it's a shitshow at certain times.
Similarly, I've taken to using UberPool during winter because, while it's a little slower, it gives me back 1-1.5 hours per day of productive time, for a marginal cost of $2-3 beyond the subway cost.
Any advice on where else I should be looking?
For example, it's like 10m from Marcy Ave to Essex St. in the LES. The J goes downtown in the Wall St. area while the M takes much of the same path as the F along 6th Ave, and both of those trains follow the same lines up until Myrtle-Broadway. In fact, it's literally two stops from Essex St. during rush hour as the J runs express (sometimes it sees itself as a Z).
I cannot believe they put an Apple store in there. It should be a crime to choose profits over efficiency.
Flushing
Fresh Meadows
Rego Park
Maspeth
Middle village
Kew Gardens
Take a look at the NYC subway map. Follow trains heading East of Manhattan: E,F,7,L etc...
It's hard to find a great apartment if you don't already live in NYC and know what you're looking for, so you'll probably only be in your first apartment for 1 year anyway. Living in Manhattan will give you a central base to explore the city, get to know your transportation options, and make trips to other neighborhoods around the city that you might be interested in moving to. You will also avoid locking yourself into a commute that might be longer/more variable/more miserable than you might originally understand.
At the end of your year in Manhattan, you'll be able to make a more informed choice about whether to stay, or to "upgrade" to a nicer place in Brooklyn, Queens, uptown Manhattan, Jersey City, or even the suburbs.
Queens off the M line.
Anywhere off the F line.
In general you want to use something like StreetEasy search that lets you specify search areas based on commute and subway lines.
On days when NJTransit wakes up on the right side of the bed...
a particular shade of cake at that. i lived in bedstuy a couple of years and everything was ridiculously affordable. what's the catch? you have to live around working class people (read: black/hispanic).
-A in-unit washer and dryer. For many NYC-dwellers, having one's own washer and dryer gives the feeling of having "made it". -A spare bedroom for hosting out-of-town visitors
-Central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
-Enough space to have people over or host dinner parties
-A kitchen area that can fit more than one person
-A comfortable and separate area to work at home
Things that people in almost every "second tier" city get standard for much less than $2000 a month?
If I were to live by myself, I'd get half of the amenities in that list at $2k. If I were to venture an extra 15mins (by subway) out, I can find a similar place to my current one for $2k/mo that's a 1BR.
Funny how people are tiering up cities. NYC rent should be compared against NYC salaries. Cost of living is still high in NYC, but so are your chances of landing a salary that can let you afford a comfortable lifestyle. Especially in our profession.
I'm ignoring Manhattan, and so should most people that expect suburban comforts, unless if you're living (north of) Harlem.
You know, you can always tell when a non-native New Yorker lives in New York, because they all choose one of five neighborhoods to live in, and then complain about their poor living conditions.
My guy, you can live in one of the other boroughs, have an average commute to work, and have good living conditions that satisfy at least half of your list of requirements there for $2000 in 2011.
Like other commentators here have said, people of a certain class (and age) want to have their cake and eat it too.