Live data from Hacker News

Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

axios.com

821–830 of 1001 posts

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

#821
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…

Someone's feeling of safety/nervousness has more to do with a variety of different variables that are unique to them, the place in question, and the situation they're in.

Personally, I'd rather be alone on foot in NYC than alone on foot in some small town where I'd stand out. Maybe because I grew up in a city and have traveled to many places, maybe because of my characteristics that make me feel vulnerable when I'm the outsider in a less diverse area, or maybe because I've lived in a city far more violent than NYC- so for me the things I visit for are worth the possible risk of crime.

NYC isn't even on the top 50 most violent cities in the world, which is quite a feat when you consider how things used to be there in the 80s/90s.

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

#822
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The implication is that because this rule is from 1992 (which I guess is considered ancient history), arguing that it should be implied here is essentially saying that central banking was solved in 1992. It's a bad argument.

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

#823

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…

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 solution of course is to build more, but it just happens that the private initiative always build under demand because it is inelastic and it's in their interest to keep the market as so.

Of course the Vienna success came from public intervention because otherwhise you'd have exactly the same situation of hundreds of other cities where rent is always a hefty amount of modal income and no matter how easy and cheap is to build it just happens those with access to capital never meet demand.

You need to build more, in many cite MUCH more, and you need vacant housing so floating population can come and go easily.

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

#824
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those $500 homes are not inhabitable. As someone who was in Detroit less than 24 hours ago, I can tell you I was surprised at how expensive the housing was. Not that it was close to Bay Area prices, but I was expecting to see places I liked for 300-400k. The reality is more like 600k for less than 2,000 square feet.

You absolutely can get houses for 300-400K in Detroit. Where exactly were you looking at? Houses that you're describing are definitely possible in hot areas like Downtown and Downtown adjacent areas like Corktown, Indian Woods, and Midtown.

I was looking in those areas.

Agreed that you can find $300k houses (and cheaper). I was just surprised that the nicer areas were still pricy. I mean Indian Village, and the neighborhoods you mentioned, have some nice homes, but those neighborhoods feel like an oasis surrounded by areas that are dealing with very tough economic situations.

Again, I was just surprised at the price for places I liked. If I wanted to take a chance on a neighborhood that might turn around in the next few years I could find some deals (although a lot of those homes need a lot of work).

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

#825
post #275
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?

> Naively, any rent is more than zero rent, so why let a unit sit empty?

There's a substantial cost in having a renter living there, both in dollars and risk. So if the rent isn't enough to cover those, it's cheaper to let it sit unused.

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

#826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC…

> NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. I don't think that's true: NYC is at 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000, and the national median sits at 4.0. That's 45% more violent than the median. That's not small! I feel like some PR firm must have implanted this idea in everyone's minds that NYC is somehow magically safer, but it's not showing up in the stats, and if the stats are skewed by reporting its almost cert…

I've only ever heard the claim made in reference to other large cities, not suburban, rural, or exurban parts of the country.

Its trivially true that dense urban environments are going to have different baseline patterns of crime

It also seems pretty clear to me that this is the context OP was speaking in, given that almost everything else he described are features of big cities.

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

#827
post #705

I visited Manhattan once, what I noticed was how run down metro (underground) was. I would compare it with Kiev metro around 2016, and that country was already at war. I have no idea how city hall can get away with doing so little!

Be careful. It seems from the comments here that NYC transit is one of the attraction factors.

Both can be true.

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

#828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, only other places that compare to NYC are Singapore and Sydney. Great food in Singapore, great weather (usually) in Sydney. The people can be a bit busy in Singapore though. Certainly no NYC, but they ticked all my recreation, arts, food, people and transport boxes. Unfortunately, they’re all so goddamn expensive to live in.

I lived in Sydney for five years! Great city. Lived there before I came here. My partner and I are looking at Madrid. But yeah, there is no other city in the world that's going to be like NY. Maybe London but of course that has the same problems.

* less guns.

* not specifically talking about London, either.

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

#829
post #577
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I come from a rural village where I could leave my bicycle unlocked over night at the center of the village and it wouldn't get stolen. When I moved to a city, one realization I made was that cycling is just a lot less convenient if you have to worry about your bicycle getting stolen. Also I can't leave my home door unlocked when I go somewhere (and thus have to remember to take the keys with me). I think sma…

Haven’t locked my door in 25 years in NYC. (I am in a doorman building.)

What building do you live in?

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

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even according to this, murder and manslaughter is significantly up in the last 2 years. But you're also ignoring the fact that in other parts of the country these crime rates are 1-10% of these numbers. NYC could be much safer, if the right policies were applied.

No doubt it could be safer but I'm asking you to explain how NYC gave up on crime. In 20 years the crime rate looks like it went down maybe ~45%? I believe the south has the highest per capita murder rate which is mostly Republican led. It's states with lower education and higher poverty that have high murder rates. I think blaming Democrats or Republicans is misguided. We're a country pretty evenly split and there's…

For some reason no one wants to blame a lack of education, poverty or a lack of opportunity on crime (per your above statement). Everyone wants to get into these weird, esoteric arguments about what might have cause the crime rates that aren't germane to the actual, easily identifiable problems... most likely so no one has to try and solve those issues.
Post reply on HN