Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#361

Post by MattGaiser »

afavour wrote: post #43

As a New Yorker myself I do wonder where this ends up. Me and my relatively well paid friends can afford to live here but we depend on a lot of lower paid folks for the city to function. Grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, coffee baristas, all that sort of thing. Maybe right now they have a half hour subway ride to work and that’s acceptable. But as they get pushed further and further out it’s going to break down…

> Wages will need to go up, which means the costs of goods and services will need to go up, and the city will get even less affordable.

Which shouod decrease the number of people living there, putting a limit on cost growth.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#362

Post by rayiner »

I wonder how much of contemporary Democratic politics is driven by insane rents in NYC and SF. The party has seen an influx of core Reagan voters—everyone from Wall Street bankers to Silicon Valley engineers (Reagan won Santa Clara County by 17 points in 1984). These affluent, highly educated folks have adopted the narratives and politics of the working class, juxtaposed against a ever-more-narrowly-defined “elite.” And it’s not the Kennedy-esque “noblesse oblige” that’s been a historical pattern. These folks don’t just express concern for the working class, but identify with them and are angry about the economic system. And I have no idea how to explain that, except they’re paying $5,000 a month for a cramped little apartment in NYC or SF, and feel like victims of the economic system rather than the winners.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#363

Post by kyawzazaw »

dionidium wrote: post #357
sbf501 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad there are "investment luxury hi-rises" popping up all over the skyline that are largely unpopulated. If that's what people want to build to park their billions, we have other problems to tend to first.

This is a conspiracy-theory-level analysis that isn't supported by any available evidence.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/05/nearly-half-of-luxury-units-em...

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#364

Post by xhrpost »

mancerayder wrote: post #306
j0hnyl wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they can. The thing is the corporate landlords would rather have their high rises sit empty than rent the units at reasonable rates.

do you have evidence for this? Vacancy rates are well low at the moment.

https://www.tiktok.com/@boweryboi/video/7105845424442920238?...

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#365

Post by kyawzazaw »

suchow wrote: post #275
j0hnyl wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they can. The thing is the corporate landlords would rather have their high rises sit empty than rent the units at reasonable rates.

Do you know what would motivate this behavior? Naively, any rent is more than zero rent, so why let a unit sit empty?

It keeps the market rate high for other units/properties.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#366

Post by surement »

sbf501 wrote: post #354
huevosabio wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing =/= Land. But our policies which heavily kneecap our ability to build more [0] make it such that Housing starts behaving like Land. The solution is to build more, and the success of Vienna does not come from public intervention but from the added supply. Tokyo is another city with famously cheap housing, and the secret is that they make it easy to build. I personally think that achieving affordable housing pr…

Too bad there are "investment luxury hi-rises" popping up all over the skyline that are largely unpopulated. If that's what people want to build to park their billions, we have other problems to tend to first.

that's what you get when there's rent control; luxury housing doesn't count so there's more of an incentive to build that instead

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#367

Post by adharmad »

macksd wrote: post #302
suchow wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what would motivate this behavior? Naively, any rent is more than zero rent, so why let a unit sit empty?

My gut feeling is this doesn't entirely explain it, but any tenant is also more work than no tenant, so they may not want to do the work of signing a new lease and dealing with the work it will trigger for less than you're making per-head on your current tenants. There's probably also a fear that if you let a new tenant in for lower rent, this might lower the rent other people expect and the problem starts snowballin…

Surely this works in a short timeframe where a landlord can make a tactical decision to let the property sit empty rather than rent it out for less than a threshold. Landlords can even collude on a minimal rent below which they will not rent. (Basically "hold the line"). But how is this sustainable in the long run? The money for the original mortgage has to come from some place. Not all landlords have an infinite supply of money to keep this practice going on for a few years. (There is no VC funding available for them).

With commercial units (eg - downtown San Francisco) it is even harder because with remote work, the jobs are never coming back to the city.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#369

Post by mattwad »

m_ke wrote: post #221
huevosabio wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing =/= Land. But our policies which heavily kneecap our ability to build more [0] make it such that Housing starts behaving like Land. The solution is to build more, and the success of Vienna does not come from public intervention but from the added supply. Tokyo is another city with famously cheap housing, and the secret is that they make it easy to build. I personally think that achieving affordable housing pr…

I'm no NIMBY but places like NYC will never be able to build enough to outpace demand.

All over NYC, there are empty buildings and apartments. There's space, but landlords are artificially reducing supply.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#370

Post by ponow »

noelherrick wrote: post #156
nickles wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free market advocates always find the next culprit why the market can't deliver. I advocate for the free market because it's been the most reliable way of elevating humans from subsistence levels of consumption and improving their quality of life. It's been the driving force in elevating billions of people from poverty over recent decades. I'd wager that most people, free market advocates or otherwise, would consid…

Industrialization, constitutional democracy, science, regulation, and unions have raised standards of living for the majority of people. You forget history if you don't remember things like the Battle of Blair Mountain (first aerial bombardment on US soil) or the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, not to mention the incredible death and misery inflicted by that first capitalistic country Britain. The free market does not f…

> The free market does not feel very free to the vast majority of people who have to deal with incredibly oppressive companies

Yeah, people complain on their iphones, with their increased lifespans, and surfeit of food, so that even the poor are fat. Cry me a river.

Post reply on HN