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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

#891

Post by randomopining »

mattzito wrote: post #95
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…

Also as a New Yorker, worth noting that many of the lowest paid workers are undocumented, and their flexibility to pursue higher paying work is limited. Sadly, this means that 60-90 minute commutes are not out of the ordinary.

Commuting 60+ mins on the subway is not terrible compared to some 3rd world countries. NYC is a full incentive driven place. It may seem inhumane to some, but that's just the way the world works. It's normal to have a super small apartment in HK or Tokyo, even if you're upper middle class. Just economic incentives at work.

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

#892

Post by [deleted] »

bogomipz wrote: post #648
derekdahmer wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you. In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from (edit: downtown) Manhattan and you'd really have to go out…

>"The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you." This makes no sense. It's a mobile city. You can live on the UWS but have to go downtown to see a doctor, or wor…

[deleted]

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

#893

Post by timbo1642 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#894

Post by acheron »

bradlys wrote: post #567
throwaway23234 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really really weird space that didn't really exist in 1984. I would say that today's "engineers" below the 80% salary threshold for this space are today's "construction workers" and heavily democratic voters (There are also of course "construction workers" too, of course). Maybe about 5 years ago I would have said that people making 200k are wealthy. Today I would say that they are a lot of people that have be…

$200k isn’t enough to buy anything in SF though. Also - I know a lot of people making $200k/yr and they spend relatively little. Honestly - you sound really out of touch and like you know no one who makes $200k/yr in SF. Where would you put your boat if you even could afford one? Where would you put a camper? Do you think people at 200k in sf are renting houses often? Houses with space for boats and campers?! Sounds…

Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption as much as buying a new BMW every year or taking European vacations all the time. If you want to spend your wealth (and yes, 200k/yr is ridiculously high) on living in SF that’s your choice, but that doesn’t make you non wealthy.

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

#895

Post by bradlys »

acheron wrote: post #894
bradlys wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200k isn’t enough to buy anything in SF though. Also - I know a lot of people making $200k/yr and they spend relatively little. Honestly - you sound really out of touch and like you know no one who makes $200k/yr in SF. Where would you put your boat if you even could afford one? Where would you put a camper? Do you think people at 200k in sf are renting houses often? Houses with space for boats and campers?! Sounds…

Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption as much as buying a new BMW every year or taking European vacations all the time. If you want to spend your wealth (and yes, 200k/yr is ridiculously high) on living in SF that’s your choice, but that doesn’t make you non wealthy.

Do you live in SF? It sounds like you don’t live in SF.

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

#896

Post by randomopining »

diehunde wrote: post #569
jononomo wrote: post #68

I decided about four years ago that it just doesn’t make sense to live in NYC if you’re not making $200k/year consistently. Also, I was surprised at how many people without an original thought in their head earn $200k/year in NYC —- the city rewards a sort of dull ambition. Do you want to hang out with people who are intelligent and ambitious yet somehow fail to be interesting? If so, then NYC is for you!

How much is the take-home pay if you make $200k a year? About 12K a month? A rent of 5k would take away almost half of that. A $4K rent would be at the limit of the 1/3 recommendation but not sure what you can find these days for a $4K rent. It's doable, but I don't think it's sustainable if you want to save money or live comfortably

You can get very nice (NYC level nice) 1bd in a good spot easily for $4k. So a 30 year old professional working at bigcorp as a senior _____, they can afford it. I wouldn't want to pay that though. It's just 4k a month being thrown away to do the NYC thing. Good for 1 year if you're single, but after that it's like been there done that.

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

#897

Post by randomopining »

dopeboy wrote: post #706
_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.

As someone who spent 21 to 29 there, it simply is the best place to live in the US for a particular part of life. Arts, food, nightlife - it makes it all worth it. For me, I started to age out of it which made it less worth it. But it's more than a dream or "fomo" - it truly is the most enjoyable place to be in the US. I visit nowadays and it's just as magical as it used to be.

Do you think 29/30 is aging out of NYC? Seems like people stay well into the flow of cool things there towards 40.

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

#898

Post by closeparen »

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…

Government intervention reflects popular will, and The People will themselves a housing crisis. They don't like change, they don't like neighbors, and they certainly don't like neighbors from different income levels than their own. The New York and San Francisco housing markets might be better governed by the Viennese electorate, but that's not on the table. They are governed by their own electorates, badly, and these are the results. Increasing the intensity of that governance will only amplify their already-revealed and already-governing preference that their cities be exclusionary museum pieces.

Put another way, if you accept that housing scarcity is bad, going to the public and saying "How do you want housing in your city to be?" is only going to make it worse.

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

#899

Post by obiefernandez »

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…

Have you considered Mexico City?

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

#900

Post by rayiner »

bradlys wrote: post #895
acheron wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption as much as buying a new BMW every year or taking European vacations all the time. If you want to spend your wealth (and yes, 200k/yr is ridiculously high) on living in SF that’s your choice, but that doesn’t make you non wealthy.

Do you live in SF? It sounds like you don’t live in SF.

You don’t have to live in SF to observe that living in SF is a choice. Many of my law school cohort has household incomes of $300k to $1 million. Many choose to live in MYC or SF or DC and pay nearly $2 million for a house. My wife and I instead chose to buy a sub-$500k house in an exurb. We eat at Maggianos instead of Per Se, but we can afford “rich people” luxuries like a house on the water, sending our kids to private school, etc. But those are choices. An ordinary American would consider us all “rich,” and rightfully so. They don’t care whether we spend our riches on boats versus exclusive neighborhoods versus the cultural amenities of a big city.
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