>Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a cities of millions.
I'm currently in my mid-30's. Throughout all of my 20's, I thought it would be a blast to live in NYC. Then I had a good stretch where I visited it a whole bunch of times, hanging out with friends and family who lived there, and you know what I noticed? Unless you were an older family member who owned a home/apartment, every younger person was renting and the topic of conversation among locals, both locals who knew each other and locals who just met one another, was about where they're living, how much their rent is, what kind of battle they had to go through to get the place, what kind of battles their friends went through to get their places, and then they'd compare the different amenities they had or didn't have. I watched these same conversations - some of which were told like war stories - play out again and again and again and again.
Then, you get into the whole issue of bed bugs, how prevalent they are in NYC and how much of a nightmare it is to deal with them, and you realize that life in NYC is largely spent just trying to figure out how to have a place to live, and it suddenly feels incredibly stupid to bother to try and move there. The nightlife and entertainment and culture, as cool as they are, just aren't worth it if you're constantly hassling with such a basic need.
But that's just me. /shrug
I can't speak to the bedbugs problem, I've been lucky I suppose.
My (now) wife & I both got well paying jobs at banks out of college almost 20 years ago. Our entire signing bonuses went to apartment fees & deposits. We were each in a situation where 1 paycheck per month went to the rent. Neither of us had a dishwasher, let alone a washer/dryer, central air, any aircon.. etc. Our buildings had bugs&rats, and walls thin enough to hear neighbors phone calls.
Marrying and moving up to nicer places, we still had no washer/dryer across the next 2 apartments.
Finally when we felt like we had "made it" in our mid-30s, we bought a new condo and finally have a washer/dryer. It cost more than my parents, in-laws, and sister's homes combined.. and then multiplied by two. It has only 2 beds (not 3 like the aforementioned homes). My kitchen has a stove the size of a fisher price play kit, and the oven doesn't fit standard sized baking trays. I have only 1 zone AC which can't manage to keep the different rooms within +/-5F of each other.
I could live like a proverbial king in 95% of the rest of the country on this budget.
$0.60 per mile is $6k per year at 10k miles per year, which is a decent amount of driving. $9k per year at 15k miles per year.
However, you can usually get more than 200k miles/10 years out of a car, so those costs above are very high end costs. Unless you opt for luxuries, I think annual car spend can easily be brought down to $6k, or $500 per month. Even less if you opt for liability only insurance, and live in a place that does not require you to drive 10k miles per year.
You definitely spend more than $10-12k/year once you have a family for even a modest amount of space.
And that's the average cost of car ownership, it's easy to find a cheap car.
Many NYers need to construct elaborate fantasies to delude themselves that actually living in NYC is totally economical/convenient/rational, and not just their personal preference. Something about a river in Egypt.
In reality while it's fun, its also often inconvenient, expensive, or both.
Yes, people talk about their rent and their apartments (amongst many other things!), but it's because it's one of the things they all have in common— they rent. And because we loved to collectively complain about things.
And not once in the 10 years did I have bed bugs. I think I knew one other person with them (barring I'm sure a few who never shared).
All that being said, there is absolutely a housing shortage AND things in NYC are tougher than anywhere else. But I liken NYC to the doughnut added to the baseball bat when batters warm up— once you take it off (and live anywhere else) everything feels easier.
It works ok in your 20s because you may not have pets/kids/ailing parents/etc to worry about. And you don't realize that you are treading water while your friends outside the city are moving onto more established phases of their lives..
New Yorkers have been doing this for decades upon decades. When I moved here in the early 2000s I thought it was weird too, but it's totally normal to ask those sorts of questions of each other here. It's been difficult to "make it" here for as long as New York has been New York. My grandmother once told me towards the end of her life about how she and my grandfather had tried to live in NYC back after WWII and how hard it was, how they didn't last long. I didn't even know they had lived anywhere besides the Boston area until then.
There's a lot going on in NYC, possibly more than anywhere in the world. And in fact, that's why people want to move there.
There's no long term stability to be had, so it's no wonder that people left when given the chance in the form of increased remote opportunities and a lifestyle "reset" in the form of covid.
"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere ..."
.....
And yes, we look the same
Both pumping steel
Both sweating
But you know she got nothing to hide
And I got something to hide here
Called desire.
I got something to hide here
Called desire
And I will get out of here
You know that fear potion is just about to come
In my nose is the taste of sugar
And I got nothing to hide here
Save desire
And I'm going to go
I'm going to get out of here
I'm going to get out of here
I'm going to get on that train
And I'm going to go on that train
And go to New York City
I'm going to be somebody
I'm getting
Going to get on that train
Go to New York City
I'm going to be so big
I'm going to be a big star
And I will never return ...On the other hand, lots of New York evangelists in 2023 are lifers who have locked in their rent-stabilized apartment rates 20 years ago, and enjoy all the amenities that (largely) the rest of us are supposed to pay for.
I'm not knocking tier 2 cities or advocating NY, but that's just not true. Some people don't value what NY has to offer - the elite, the center of the world in arts, business, food, talent, etc etc. If you don't value it, absolutely don't pay for it - pay for things that you value. If you do value those things, there is no place else in the US, and with some exceptions, the world.
I have a question for people who say this: Have you ever actually lived in any metropolitan area outside New York? I usually ask because the answer I usually get from New York exceptionalists is a dismissive version of "no," like "why would I live anywhere else?" A lot of cities (both in the US and around the world) have better environments for each of the things you stated there, but New York is somewhat unique in that it is good for all of them.
Also, note that I am not talking about Cleveland as a "tier 2" city. New Yorkers think that San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles are "tier 2."
For me, Chicago and Boston. I spent a ton of time hanging out in SF between 2008-2015 when I worked for a startup out there. I've spent a lot of time in LA for both work and pleasure. [edit] I also spent a lot of time in Miami for work at one point in my life.
And yeah, to me it's true. There's really no comparison with NYC in the US. That doesn't mean there aren't really awesome cities in the country, they're just not New York.
> New Yorkers think that San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles are "tier 2."
Not that these rankings really mean much, but whenever people try to quantify it, NYC is often at the top [1]. Again, lots of the "tier 2" cities have similar things as NYC, it's just not often on the same scale.
Philadelphia is about 1.5 hours by train from NY (and probably ~2 hours driving). While it's very underrated - really a special place of its own - it's not NY or part of it.
1. Talent Density: Chicago is optimized talent-wise at a regional level (the midwest), while NYC is optimized at a global level. Chicago simply doesn't have the same pull if you don't live in the midwest the way NYC does for folks living anywhere across the world. This creates an obvious talent gap.
2. Culture: Chicago operates as a much more of an all-American city, reflecting cultural attitudes not too dissimilar from the rest of the country. Examples here include a heavy sports culture, emphasis on drinking/going out. You see a similar trend with NYC transplants (like myself in my early 20's) but you're eventually forced to grow out of it in NYC and create a more unique and diversified identity. I haven't seen much of this in my social circle from Chicago who never left.
3. Industry Density: Chicago is considered top at a few select industries including insurance, commodities etc. OTOH, there are very few industries that NYC would not be considered top in. Strong talent begets strong talent and this creates the sort of network effect that's present in the bay (for tech), and in NYC, but not in Chicago minus a few industries. These network efforts, over a long enough timeframe, fundamentally alter the landscape of one's career.
4. Local v.s. global maxima: Chicago allows you to reach a relatively easier maxima (career or culture wise), which likely means Chicagoans are happier on average. That concept doesn't exist in NYC or the bay. It pushes you to reach a global maxima which is inherently more challenging. For example, getting a job at Google likely sets you for life in Chicago. In NYC or the bay, that's simply a starting point. This isn't for the faint of heart but is highly rewarding if you're ambitious and work-oriented.
5. Arts and Fashion: The same concept of local v.s. global maxima exists here too.
6. Food: Far more global and unique in NYC than in Chicago (which in-itself has great food)
Yes, and I've spent a lot of time in many cities.
> A lot of cities (both in the US and around the world) have better environments for each of the things you stated there, but New York is somewhat unique in that it is good for all of them.
It's just not true. For example, name another city in the US that has arts anything like NY: fine arts, jazz, classical, theater, etc. etc. And if you think that other city has them like NY, you either don't understand the art or don't understand what NY has. (OK, maybe London.) Pull up the theater listings in NY and in the city you are thinking of.
Again, other cities can be wonderful; not everyone cares about those things or does at that level; not everyone has time for them (one reason many people with families move to suburbs); but there's no comparison.
The New York arts:
* If you're looking for the Broadway experience, you won't find it anywhere but Broadway (West End sometimes tries). If you want to define theater a little more broadly, though, there are a lot of options. West End is a different beast, but I think it's actually a bigger scene. For other kinds of theater, Tokyo is also fantastic, and I hear that Melbourne, Australia has a huge theater scene. If you define theater more broadly to include film, LA beats out New York by a mile.
* New York is the jazz capital of the world right now, but New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago have traded that role and all have a huge scene. That said, jazz basically grew up in Harlem, so it's hard to beat New York.
The non-New-York arts:
* Boston and SF probably have the best classical music scenes in the US. Outside of the US, Vienna holds the title hands down. Like in most arts, New York has the big spectacle (the Met Opera and Carnegie Hall), but in classical music it has a lot less less depth.
* In terms of old artworks, New York has the biggest collection of old works in the US, but Paris, Barcelona, London, and Rome are all huge and probably more notable. In terms of new art, LA is the place to be (in the US).
Again, I said that New York is good at all of these things, but it's not exactly head and shoulders above the rest of the world unless you specifically want a New York experience. It sounds like yours is Broadway, and that's fine, but it's not a universal desire.
I personally prefer to travel to New York when I want to see something on Broadway or at the Met Opera, and that's (IMO) a lot better than living there 24/7.
Pull up the classical music listings in NY and in any of those other cities, or all of those other cities combined. It's really not true in any sense. Let's not forget all the musicians in NY, the top music school (Julliard), etc etc etc.
> In terms of old artworks, New York has the biggest collection of old works in the US, but Paris, Barcelona, London, and Rome are all huge and probably more notable. In terms of new art, LA is the place to be (in the US).
I'm pretty sure that if you want to be an artist - making 'new art' - NY is the place to be, probably in the world. But yes, some other global cites in Europe and Asia are good too. Of course Europe has more 'old art' - that's where much of it came from.
Juilliard is probably the top drama school in the world, however. Also, Manhattan School of Music may be the best jazz school.
Finally, what "listings" are you referring to? I have never seen a good listing of classical music performances anywhere I have lived, including New York, that wasn't essentially word-of-mouth.
And rent control exacerbates it, as you have literally over a million people that are a "locked into" their below-market rate units and can never leave because they'll never find anything that cheap elsewhere, regardless of whether they still need that much space. My great aunt for example is 101 years old and lives in a 3 bedroom apartment in Queens. 50 years ago there were 4 people living in that apartment (including her husband and her kids, all now dead).
Plus there's the issue of renovations/demolitions that remove units and replace them with a smaller number of more expensive units.
No, that's not how normal distributions work. Among the 5.3%, some significant portion of those left empty housing units in their wake. They weren't all 3rd roommates that left.
It's also possible for supply of housing to reduce simultaneously. Say if there was a change in rental laws that strongly incentivized landlords to pull units from the market?[0]
[0] https://reason.com/2019/06/17/new-yorks-progressive-backed-r...
Yes, when your rent goes up 10-20% YoY and you simultaneously lose some or all of your income, you tend to leave.
A lot of people left NYC in the last few years because they could not afford it, with housing being both the main expense and also the one that has increased the most in the last few years.
Somewhat ironically, you have people choosing to stay single and not have kids, which gives them more money to spend on themselves for more room, which eats up housing and drives up prices.
I still don't have a laundry machine or a thermostat, I have holes in my walls from when my landlord half-did things, my rent has gone up, and I'm expected to continue to do more and get more responsibility.
Something's gotta give. I'm not sure what it's gonna be.
I wasn't really aware of this, but was just wondering about it the other day, as it seems like logically they should be cheaper; economies of scale ought to help for both housing and infrastructure, I would think. Interesting to hear that expensive cities aren't necessarily inevitable.
We need to keep doing that. NYC doesn’t need a few thousand more apartments—it needs hundreds of thousands more apartments.
On the other hand, if "every" landlord "just" asks for more, what the fuck is anyone going to do about it?
But this is just basic economics. Supply and demand. Are you implying that that doesn't set the prices, and that landlords are leaving money on the table out of the kindness of their hearts? That seems unlikely to me.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
If those houses are sitting empty for weeks then maybe there's going to be a bit of a correction (hard to imagine rent ever going down in NY though).
If those houses aren't sitting empty for long, then maybe NY is going through a lot of churn. Will be interesting to see how NY changes over the next few years.
Food wise it's wild too. What used to be the price of an entres is now the price of an appetizer and the service have gotten down too.
Getting a place you actually want to live 2 bedrooms is at least $4K we pay much more because we live in a nice building.
But it's still a great city and I am sure somethings gotta give.
The table they sat my wife & I at was, I swear to you, 2 square feet. It was a protrusion from the shelving in the wall that they had placed 2 backless tools at. It was like taking a 16" MacBook Pro and unfolding it so it was splayed open... I got the keyboard and wife got the screen. We actually begged to be sat at the bar instead but they declined.
At some point it's just not worth it anymore. I'm too old for this.
Maybe zoomers living in small studio who are meeting randos for a date. I had less eating space than when I eat my sad salad lunch at my desk. Who needs that anxiety on a Sunday afternoon. I have dining seating in my apartment for 6-8 people and I'm hunched over a veritable coach flight tray table and paying for the privilege?
This is a tangent but mid and post pandemic, restaurant service seems to be significantly worse. Prices going up at least makes sense to me, prices are up everywhere, it is what it is and I can still afford to eat out. However, I find rarely do go out to restaurants now and service is a major part of that. Not to mention tipping percentages seems to have inflated on top of prices and for worse service...
I tend to end up at more casual places where I'm ordering at the counter and my food comes out to me (bistro's I guess? I'm not sure what the term is) where I'm mostly on my own after that, getting my own silverware, drinks, napkins, etc.
I’ve been to NYC many times and have friends in their late 30s that live there. The ones that live there say the same (“it’s great”) but never elaborate.
From the outside, it honestly looks like a dirty, difficult, chaotic city. Many restaurants, but all seem to be copy+paste coffee shop, Italian, etc or very low quality cafe/deli.
Coming from the Midwest, it feels very old, dirty and poor yet somehow expensive and desirable. What am I missing?
Cities generally have more variety of types of food (Burmese, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Jewish, etc.) that can be hard to find in the midwest (I grew up in the rural-ish suburbs outside of Buffalo - maybe not technically midwest, but close enough).
You have a lot of things close to you, you can walk out of your apartment and have a ton of options right here, in NYC you can subway anywhere else easily. The density makes things feel more like a community vs. houses spread apart where everything is by cars and strip malls.
In NYC you can go to the comedy cellar on macdougal street one night and Chris Rock or Louie CK might drop in unannounced to practice material (happened to me twice and I didn't go that many times).
If you live in a major city lots of friends pass through for one reason or another and you can meet up with them (this literally never happened in the suburbs of Buffalo).
There are also often more events and variety of people which can make things more interesting. It's also a lot different visiting vs. having your own place there for an extended time. Visiting is often more stressful because you don't have an easy place to retreat to.
I grew up in a very rural area, and worked in some big towns/small cities before coming to London. Maybe it's the sheer mass of people, but it's _much_ easier to find people on my wavelength in London than anywhere else. And that's something I'd happily give up food options, cultural events, and honestly quite a lot else for.
Cities draw lots of people, typically ambitious people, but really all types.
> Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age. [0]
I generally think the above is true, but even outside of ambition there's just finding people to have interesting conversations with that are also interested in the things you're interested in whatever that might be. That's a lot easier with you live in an area that has more people, especially when it selects for the kind of people willing to move to a new place. It's one of the reasons global hubs have an advantage over mid-size cities and why the bay area has a specific advantage when it comes to tech.
A counterpoint.
I don't live in NYC but do live in a similar major "coastal elite" type city.
When I visit the downtown areas of cities in the Midwest I'm always flabbergasted at how bad they are. Car culture reigns supreme, there's sprawl, while there's usually some portion of the inner downtown core that's seen a renaissance for the most part it's just empty buildings, especially at night.
Sure I can hop in a car and drive to some other area of the city limits, but that sucks. I'd rather be able to walk or take a short metro ride to my next thing. And my next thing. And my next thing. Similar, sure there are (usually) good restaurants. But they're also often a car ride away.
I'll grant that NYC is *so* large that it has similar issues. If one is in lower Manhattan and wants to get to Queens, good luck with that. But there's always something to do in a walkable radius.
Also, I moved here for a job at a FANG. This is a top tier tech city, with salaries matched only by the Bay Area and Seattle. Compared to those other two I find NYC obviously superior.
I think SF is also prettier than NYC and a lot smaller while still being a really nice place to be (also much better weather year round).
I love NYC too, it just has different advantages imo.
The lack of housing isn't displacing people like us, it's displacing people who make less than us. And frankly our building is not nearly luxurious enough as it should be for how much we're paying for it, which is another symptom of the lack of housing construction over the decades (the average housing stock here is too old).
Today, it's mostly a playground for the very rich to park their money in cement because they cannot make up their mind about trusting the government.
People I know from the East Coast that have visited are typically floored by the quality of life in flyover country. Everything we have is new, life is affordable, top performing schools and communities are growing. The local governments are generally growth oriented with excellent infrastructure and relatively Low taxes.
Oh, but maybe not as many Thai/niche ethnic restaurants, so there is that downside, ha. But beyond your 20s, why anyone would consider calling NYC home is beyond me. Quality of life for my family > proximity to restaurants and bands.
Which city?
AirBnB satisfies one kind of demand: short term stays. Building more apartments and other housing satisfies another kind of demand. You keep building until you satisfy the demand of both
At one point there should be enough supply that AirBnB will bring too little profit for people to be bothered.
Things like AirBnB work precisely because the supply is constrained.
But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists. Now maybe banning airbnb will put such a damper on tourism that it becomes a problem, but let's deal with that problem when it happens.
Tourists bring in good tax dollars for the city since NYC has insane hotel taxes on top of the ridiculous cost of Hotels.
From a moral perspective, it really shouldn't be anyone's business how a property owner decides to use their property. If they want to rent it on month-to-month leases or 12 month leases, it's up to them. If there's not enough permanent or long-term housing, then you need to deregulate NYC's byzantine zoning regulations and make it a lot easier to build whatever, wherever.
Also you need to get rid of rent control; it is categorically proven to make things worse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul...
2. I’m in the market to buy, and I’ve been able to make bids below asking so I’m not sure demand is as high as you’d suggest.
You can have super high demand all making bellow asking bids if the asking price is irrational.
Literally so many people want to move here, but you look on all of streeteasy on a given day and there’s like 500 apartments. In a city of millions.
Sure you can pay more and get something. But it used to be that you traded a lot of quality of life (in unit washer dryer, dishwasher, ac, no walkups, cars, space, etc) for a lower price and the social aspects of living in a city. People don’t believe it, but cities used to be cheap. Now you literally pay more for less in all respects especially during Covid. As the prices have been spiraling up, you also get demographic shifts of only rich people or literally homeless shitting on the streets so you lose the cultural elements of having a diverse income unless you go deep into Brooklyn.
I’m not arguing that NYC is not fun still. It’s still great. But without housing for a semi normal price (I can’t even get a place with a dishwasher for less than 2.5k in most areas), and a lot of it, the trade off for living in nyc is making less and less sense.