Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by ineptech » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #396

kyawzazaw wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Seven buildings. That's not representative of...anything. It's not even worth talking about. And the effects are largely positive for the city, anyway. You've got a few big, empty buildings concentrated on one street where billionaires park their money, pay a bunch of property taxes, and use zero city services. That's an unqualified win .

No idea why you're being downvoted. This meme (rich people buying luxury condos, letting them sit vacant, and then profiting somehow) doesn't make any sense, and that article posted as evidence for it undermines it by depicting those units as being un-rentable due to oversupply in the market.

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

#452

Post by kristjansson » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #148

v7p1Qbt1im wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Wealthy residents should at some point realize that culture and entertainment venues/options are (often) created by lower income residents. If that disappears you get soulless places which are dramatically less fun to live in. Not to mention the service industry workers, who also need to come from somewhere.

You can get all that online. So it might make sense to move these communities to somewhere very very cheap. Or even distribute them around.

That's a pretty grim scenario to imagine. Art and artists 'moved' off somewhere, while the putatively rich consume their produce through screens. All so real estate prices can climb higher?

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

#453

Post by dionidium » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #438

lucaspm98 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure they’ll lose relative to the place next door, but they’ll win relative to their same unit 10 years ago because the land underneath their building (and the amenities around it) have increased in value so dramatically.

Right, but who cares? Are we trying to soak rich people or are we trying to make sure there's an abundance of housing? Are we trying to help the poor? Or are we mostly concerned with knocking the rich down a peg?

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

#454

Post by mayormcmatt » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

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…

As a Bay Area resident, I have been surprised by how far people will commute for minimum wage jobs. Just Monday, I think, our public radio station had their morning local topics show where the subject was the city of Stockton. There was a lengthy discussion about low-income commuters coming daily from Stockton to Palo Alto, to work in and around the tech campuses of SV. Personally, I have known people to come from Modesto and Merced, even one from the far side of Sacramento. Daily!

Given that, I'm just not sure where the breaking point is.

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

#455

Post by paxys » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

ctvo wrote: post #390

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…

Agree with everything except the last part. Brooklyn is a fantastic place to live, and takes 20 mins or so door to door to get to most parts of Manhattan.

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

#456

Post by jmyeet » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

Property is a tough nut to crack because there are a bunch of different issues creating this problem and some of them are local. NIMBYism is a big one obviously but so many are inveted in the value of their house that increasing property prices becomes a political goal. Worse, property becomes a tool for the ultra-rich to park money in a way that is hedged against inflation.

Rents tend to follow property prices but they lag.

Manhattan also has a big problem with the type of property that gets built, being ultra-luxury property (that sells for >$5k/sq ft). Part of the demand for this is parking money but there are other reasons. Insurance is a big one thanks to the infamous "scaffolding law".

But the main point I want to raise here is that politicians, regardless of party (in the US at least), have zero interest in fixing this problem. Why? Because they're all bought and paid for by the capital-owning class. NYC politics in particular serves property developers first, police unions second and whatever third is nobody cares.

A budget shortfall is built into your existence. This keeps you showing up to work and diminishes your ability to negotiate (since walking away isn't an option). This creates a compliant workforce that doesn't hurt profits by, say, wages going up even with just inflation.

This is what neofeudalism looks like.

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

#457

Post by usrn » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

hmillison wrote: post #411

_fat_santa wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NYC is one of the only cities in the US with quality transit and really the main one where it's easy to live car free in many areas of the city.

The metro in DC is pretty underrated and you can live car free pretty far out into its suburbs even.

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

#458

Post by nickles » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

ponow wrote: post #397

nickles wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More importantly, try arguing that it is morally correct that a hard-working laborer ought to fund a Webb telescope by non-optional taxes, when he sees no direct value in it. Why even 1 penny? Because his betters in a grant agency know better what to do with the fruits of his labor than he does? There is an optimal level of spending on basic research for society, and it's not 0. Was it a bad idea to launch unproven…

It's obvious that in the absence of state funding there would be non-state funding. It won't be the same and it won't be zero. Why does the committee's judgement take precedent? Also, some poorer people would pay to fund research in the absence of gov't funding. They actually already do, for disease research. You can use utilitarian arguments to force people to do things that they otherwise would refuse. Isn't that a…

> It's obvious that in the absence of state funding there would be non-state funding. It won't be the same and it won't be zero.

From an economic perspective, it's likely the level of funding would be less than the optimal level of funding. If the goal is to maximize public welfare, government funding is necessary.

> Why does the committee's judgement take precedent?

Ultimately someone needs to make decisions on resource allocation. Is a committee necessarily the best way? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not qualified to tell NIH how to operate.

> You can use utilitarian arguments to force people to do things that they otherwise would refuse

Agreed entirely, it's a very difficult issue to grapple with.

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

#459

Post by ch4s3 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

toto444 wrote: post #214

TOMDM wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CMV Rent is high because the demand in large cities majorly out strips supply. All policies that attempt to address housing costs that don't increase supply are treating a symptom and not the underlying cause.

My two cents : I believe that if you increase supply and allow more affordable housing in a city, it will only marginally decrease prices but will mainly attract more people to this city. I think the solution to housing cost is to make smaller cities, towns and the countryside more attractive by having higher local tax rates in cities. This source of income could be used to build better infrastructure in the rest of…

Prices are set at the margin, and demand is largely driven by employment.

> by having higher local tax rates in cities

You already pay taxes on par with Denmark if you live in NYC and have sufficient income to afford to live there without subsidized housing. Tax policy is an insane way to prop up little towns. Cities offer a lot of economic and environmental benefits, and are generally already generating more tax revenue than they receive in benefits.

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

#460

Post by jallen_dot_dev » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

kyawzazaw wrote: post #365

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?

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

That does not make sense from a game-theoretic standpoint. You would be helping other landlords at your own expense. It would be better to let other landlords make that sacrifice and rent our your own properties for as much as you can get.