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Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

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

#381

Post by lucaspm98 »

nix0n wrote: post #276
dionidium wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and property owners provide almost no value, but to provide access to housing for people who has no capital for it, which is service that could be perfectly provided by a state entity. Property of course requires maintenance and management, so the sleight of hand here is to define away all those aspects of ownership so that by definition all that's meant by "landlord" is "old guy who cashes checks." But somebody ha…

> But somebody has to maintain the property, somebody has to prioritize upgrades and improvements, somebody has to cut the grass In many buildings these things are simply not done.

If a landlord does not maintain the property, over the long run they will not be able to charge the same rent versus a similar, maintained unit.

I've used this to my advantage before. I moved into a building that needed a fresh coat of paint and had poor reviews of their maintenance and saved ~10-15% from market rent because I didn't care about appearances and am handy enough to fix a leaky faucet, etc. myself.

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

#382

Post by nickles »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #373
nickles wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read somewhere that in the USSR paying more than 4% of your income to housing was considered criminal Fortunately that was the only criminal activity in the shining beacon of freedom and prosperity that was the USSR.

If we're going to dismiss every quality and strategy of a country because of its moral crimes then everything about the US is worthless through the same path. I don't think this is a useful way to approach any of these problems, and I'm sure neither do you, so why try to score cheap points this way.

> If we're going to dismiss every quality and strategy of a country because of its moral crimes

My primary intention wasn't to refer directly to the morality of the USSR. Economically speaking, the USSR was a disaster, so I'm skeptical that we should implement the policies that quite literally destroyed a nation.

But yes, the USSR was a murderous state led by men who were happy to kill tens of millions of people for personal gain. I find that morally reprehensible.

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

#383

Post by _fat_santa »

ianbutler wrote: post #273

I went to view an apartment in Prospect Park SW recently and the line wrapped around the block. When I went to apply I was told most people had offered over the asking for rent and how much I'd like to offer over the amount. We're blind bidding on rent in NY now. I wish this was an isolated incident but most apartments I'm looking for the amount of people applying is in the 50s low 100s I decided to just stay put and…

Whenever I hear about the rental market in NYC I always ask myself: why do people want to live there?

In a way it's a rhetorical question but in another way it's not. Sure some will move there for a job but I'm sure not everyone is there just for work. Why do people put up with all that? Is it just the dream of living in NYC.

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

#384

Post by juve1996 »

TomGullen wrote: post #263

One piece of the puzzle I'm struggling with in all of this is why if housing is so expensive and rents so high are more houses not being built? Surely the incentive is there, what's going wrong?

The amount of homes being built in areas where people want them built aren't enough to offset demand. In areas where denser housing is required (coastal cities), zoning and NIMBYism prevents it.

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

#385

Post by xhrpost »

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…

> But as they get pushed further and further out it’s going to break down somewhere

It seems that higher rent is more likely to reduce standard of living first. Low wage earners who really want to be in the city will find a way, which generally means having a roommate and then I guess having even more roommates. I do wish NYC would build more dense buildings though so that a barista doesn't need to have 6 roommates.

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

#386

Post by New_California »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #36

Housing and land is a non-transable good, and therefore there should be heavy state intervention on it, preferably by doing the same as Vienna, which is holding >40% of the renting stock and charging according to income, and renting to a representative distribution of tenants so to prevent guettos. Rent is the main detractor of disposable income which hurts the rest of the economy, and property owners provide almost…

I already had communism and state-owned housing in my country, so no thanks! Never again. You are welcome to move to a state-managed economies though.

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

#387

Post by voidhorse »

rglullis wrote: post #338
voidhorse wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s quite possible to introduce regulations into the existing system that force certain actors to behave. I’m not expecting anyone to behave without such restrictions, in fact this article is precisely the evidence that people will exploit others and the system when no such restrictions exist. Many of these landlords are up charging on properties that have not been materially improved…

>I’m saying it’s quite possible to introduce regulations into the existing system that force certain actors to behave. Tell me how you want to reinvent taxes and rent control, without knowing that you want to reinvent taxes and rent control. > I’m really frustrated by these incoming renters too. You are passing judgment to all these different groups of people, without any shred of fundamental principle to justify why…

> They don’t owe anything to you or the city.

Of course not. And I don’t owe them anything either. By the same terms of your argument there’s no reason I should be satisfied with just letting them do what they want when it affects me directly since you’re stating that I should not try to do anything that affects them directly. I have my desires, which requires placing demands on their behavior since they are ignorant of the conditions of other human beings, act entirely selfishly and in a vacuum, and ruin things for the rest of us.

The fundamental principle is that people that are short-term renters disrupt communities in negative ways by having economic effects that harm long-term residents and ultimately break the existing community. I’m passing judgement on them because I witnessed the mass exodus that happened in 2020 and I witnessed all the struggle those who stayed had to endure and I witnessed the mass return of people that fled to “safer” spaces come back as though nothing happened and absolutely screw over everyone that stayed.

You must not have ever been subject to gentrification. You’ve got a real empathetic heart. I’m not “complaining” I’m trying to speak to the problem and suggest that existing solutions clearly are not enough. If anything is childish it’s your post, which tries to effectively say “we tried everything, there’s no possible other solution” and “in spite of the insane number of problems currently evident in our economics capitalism is fine and people should be able to manipulate the market without bound”. Your post has effectively no intellectual content. Being upset about something, evoking an opinion, and trying to advocate that we need a solution that will not only benefit myself but also the thousands of others affected by insane rent costs is not “acting like a spoiled child”, in my opinion. Do I have that solution? No, of course not. I’m not qualified. But if we restricted commentary on hacker news to professionally qualified individuals this thread would have close to 0 comments.

I don’t think I’m the child here.

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

#388

Post by pj_mukh »

patrickthebold wrote: post #234
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…

The article is about Manhattan. Do you have any idea if it has similar problems? In my mind, Manhattan is pretty dense.

Looks like lots of space right here tbh:

https://i.imgur.com/tVwMCYG.jpeg

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

#390

Post by ctvo »

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility.

I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along in the city, across many cultures and backgrounds. I like it has some of the best food in the world.

I think a lot of people are like me. No, we don't want to live in Boston, Chicago, or Washington DC (similar cities with mass transit). Unfortunately demand will continue to outpace supply greatly.

The only alternative I have is moving further out in Brooklyn or Queens. Unfortunately the subway has decent coverage, but moves at a snail's pace, and I'm looking at 50+ minutes for 6 miles into the city.

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