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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

#461

Post by usrn »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #19

I thought the median had to be significantly lower with those ultra luxurious rentals distorting the average, but I was wrong. The median is $4000 as of a few months ago: https://www.elliman.com/corporate-resources/market-reports

If the median is higher than the mean that probably means the distribution is heavier on the positive side.

Cheap apartments are illegal and the legal ones don't get financed/constructed. There's a cutoff much higher than zero for housing costs everywhere in the US and I'd imagine it's pretty high in NYC.

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

#462

Post by ethanbond »

dionidium wrote: post #453
ethanbond wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Uhhh, I care that we create incentives that yield desired behavior: building high quality housing that supports growth and mitigates urban squalor.

The current state is the actual opposite of that incentive. You can just buy up a parking lot in downtown Manhattan, pay ~$0 taxes on it, and keep it off the market while people continue to struggle to find housing and prices continue to climb. Then when the land has appreciated (through no actions of your own, in fact in spite of your own actions) you can sell for millions of dollars of upside.

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

#463

Post by pb7 »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #346
DeathArrow wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many attempts at public housing failed because they just tried to provide housing for low-income people in separated and/or undesirable areas, with a predictable outcome. So the taxpayers should pay so the people with low income or no income can live iny Manhattan? Why not also provide them with expensive cars and exotic vacations?

> So the taxpayers should pay so the people with low income or no income can live iny Manhattan? Yes. It's a city not a luxury resort. If people are to work all kinds of jobs at all levels of income there, then people at all income levels should be able to live there as well. This mechanism accounts for that. > Why not also provide them with expensive cars and exotic vacations? Maybe they should idk. Seems completely…

Manhattan isn’t a city, it’s the most expensive borough of a city. They don’t need to live there.

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

#464

Post by FredPret »

simonsarris wrote: post #436
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…

> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest…

Why would crime stats be expressed by square mile? To purposefully make NYC look bad?

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

#465

Post by neon_electro »

SkipperCat wrote: post #430
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…

I live in Brooklyn and feel the same way. Even if you discount all the empty luxury apartments held by foreigners who never show up, there are still tons of people who want to move here. Why?, because when you have all these people crammed together - weird stuff happens and that's what makes NYC magical. We're constantly mixing together, in the subways, bars, restaurant, parks ,etc. You get to see firsthand all the h…

I won't argue/disagree with you as far as NYC's comparably higher degree of what you describe, but having lived in Philadelphia's core, there's plenty of the mixing magic happening in other cities, but it's definitely not "the same".

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

#466

Post by flatline »

mushufasa wrote: post #450
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…

Having grown up in DC and New York, I would say more strongly that there's no other city in the USA that has comparable mass transit. The way I would put it is -- in New York, it is more of a hassle to have a car than to go without. In all those other cities, while there is some mass transit, you will find yourself wanting a car.

DC is still easier to navigate by car than by metro and bus, at least when I last lived there in 2016. Red line from MD would regularly shut down or have delays, and you were looking at a 2+ hour commute into the district. If you could get a parking spot you could reliably beat metro by about 10 minutes with much less variance. And you cannot navigate a circumferential route in a reasonable time, the purple line is the first to really attempt this and is like a drop in the bucket. If you live and work in the city it’s doable, but cross a river or the beltway and it’s really not. I had friends in Baltimore that could not get by without a car either, and they made a really dedicated effort. Mass transit in the US - outside of NYC - is just not viable at scale.

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

#467

Post by tmnvix »

"The rent is too damn high!"

A lot of talk of supply side issues, economics 101, etc in these threads.

Greetings from New Zealand, where just like so many other anglosphere economies we've been playing the low interest property speculation game for decades now. We got really, really good at it. The last couple of years saw 50% increases in property prices. Madness.

A funny thing's been happening in just the last six months though. Interest rates have gone up. 2.5% to 6% roughly. In the capital the number of homes for sale doubled compared with the year before. Prices are down 20% since the November peak.

Here's the interesting thing. While this crash is happening the number of rentals available has almost almost doubled and rents are going down. This is after tenants experienced the tightest rental market in decades just a year ago.

Where did all those new rentals come from?

Hint: there are two sides to supply and demand (no one really looks at the demand side too closely but that's where the real policy failures are).

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

#468

Post by wnolens »

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…

I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle.

It really comes down to fear of change I think. Humans are very adaptable, and the same one can thrive in car-centric suburbs as they would in shoulder-to-shoulder metropolises. Given no constraints, you prefer city. But throw in kids (requirement for more space/better schools), or a dream job (passion), or a dying parent (obligation), or a lover.. and suddenly you're building a life in a completely different place. And it works.

At least I think/hope.. because outside of a busy city I am irritable and sad. But it sure would be nice to slow down on the treadmill/rat race a bit..

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

#469

Post by corrral »

dionidium wrote: post #264
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…

> 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…

I've repeatedly been told by people who've done it (including my parents) never to become a landlord, because it's absolute hell and you'll end up making under minimum wage and tenants will fuck you over until you're even in the red and it's impossible & expensive to evict anyone even when they're not paying and causing more and more damage to the house with each passing day.

Then again, I've had others tell me it's awesome, you just have to pick your location carefully (one exclusively bought very close to nursing schools, which seemed to select for tenants who'd stick around at least a couple years and who'd pay their rent and not run a meth lab or smear shit on the walls or anything like that).

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

#470

Post by SilasX »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
slaw wrote: post #5

> The big picture: This points to a conundrum. The Fed is raising rates to cool inflation. But rate hikes are driving higher rents, which are fueling inflation. Why everyone and their dog says Fed is raising rates, when Fed just barely raised rates. Year over year inflation is 9.3% and Fed interest rate is only 1.5%, while it should be 2% points over inflation.

> while it should be 2% points over inflation Do you really think we solved central banking in 1992 [1], and if only you were one of the central bank chiefs we would be fine? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_rule

I don’t follow. The link supports the claim that interest rates should be above inflation when the latter is above target.
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