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.
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.