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I'm in Kensington with two roommates in an old house. It's definitely a great deal but if you are willing to live with roommates in a somewhat uncool area, similar deals are definitely possible: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:3000-4000%7Carea:320,324,340… For instance, here's $3500 for a 4 bedroom/1.5 bath that's on a quiet street but near a lout one https://streeteasy.com/building/171-east-8-street-brooklyn/3?from_map=…

> Could someone explain why this is happening? Given "Florida markets occupy three of the top five spots where rent growth has most dramatically outpaced wage growth since pre-pandemic," and "Houston saw the greatest annual wage growth of any metro — nearly double the national average — and was one of only four markets where wages outperformed rents," it seems like the cause is migration and insufficient new housing [1]. (Counterfactual: "In three areas — San Francisco, Portland, and Austin — rents actually declined from 2022 as market heat began to moderate, while wage growth in those areas continued to climb.") [1] https://streeteasy.com/blog/rents-grow-faster-than-wages-across-us-nyc…

Anecdotal, but: Head over to https://streeteasy.com/ & do some searches with whatever you deem to be "affordable," then compare between the various "building types" in their filtering. It's been a little while since I've done this–I, at least temporarily, gave up the idea of buying something in the city–but I noticed similar trends to keerthiko. Similar to when I was actually looking at places with a broker.

You should definitely come check it out and see if you like being here for a couple of weeks. You can definitely do a lot better than $5k, check out this street easy link[1] at the time of posting it has 173 apartments in neighborhoods in Brooklyn that are all really nice and under $4k/mo with no broker fee. There's actually a LOT of good cheap food here, depending on where you are and your tolerance for eating while standing. Entertainment costs vary, but I saw an excellent show a few weeks ago for $20 and paid I thin $8 for a beer at the venue. I've been here for 7 years and love it, it's actually very pleasant most of the time. [1]https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-4000%7Carea:321,304,320,301…

>>It may sound absurd for folks outside of NY (or Bay Area), but $2M barely gets you a 2/2 in Manhattan these days $2M USD can buy an older stock 3-bed 2-bath or "classic six"[1] co-op apartment in Manhattan.[2] Anything north of $2M for a 2-bed 2-bath is more likely to be in an expensive neighborhood, an explicitly expensive/luxury building or new (and likely luxury) condo unit building. This last category is pertinent to NYC real-estate because most apartment inventory is co-op compared to condo.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Six [2] https://streeteasy.com/3-bedroom-apartments-for-sale/manhattan/price:-… [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/realestate/getting-started-choosing…

Sold for 3.5 million in 2013. Undoubtedly worth more much now. https://streeteasy.com/building/75-and-a-half-bedford-street-new_york#…

In reality, Craigslist has hundreds of competitors across all the verticals they serve. For example, StreetEasy[1] for NYC apartment listings. [1]: http://streeteasy.com/

http://StreetEasy.com, New York City Cover letter and resume to: ruby -r base64 -e 'puts Base64.decode64("d29ya0BzdHJlZXRlYXN5LmNvbQ==")' Seeking experienced ruby/rails developers! Curiosity about the New York City real estate market a a plus :)

This page explains most of it: http://www.trulia.com/submit_listings/ Listings are either: individually entered by agents, fed to Trulia in an XML format by real estate firms (or other aggregators) or screen scraped by Trulia. They also I think have deals with some MLSs to bulk send them listings for member firms. I work for http://www.streeteasy.com we do this for NYC.

I'm about to graduate college and move to NYC for a job. The unfortunate norm there is to pay a 15% fee (of the annual rent) to brokers to get a rental apartment. The cheapest the broker's fee gets is one month's rent, so about 8.33% of the annual rent. High end apartments sometimes pay the broker's fee on the renter's behalf [2]. Large apartment complexes sometimes have their own leasing offices, so there's no fee there either. To be clear, this is a one time fee paid when you initially move into the apartment. If you renew the lease, you don't owe another broker's fee. Meaning if the rent on an apartment is $2,000/month = $24,000/year, the broker's fee on that would be $24,000 * 15% = $3,600. The cheaper apartment are usually owned by small landlords who use brokers to vet applicants. For those apartments, you're required to use brokers. There's no way to opt out by working with the landlord directly as the broker's fee is paid by the renter. The broker provides their services to the landlord for free. I'm trying my absolute best to find a no fee apartment, but it pretty severely limits my options. For studio or 1 bedroom apartments under $2,500/month, there's currently 1,362 no-fee apartments [0] and 3,395 apartments at large (so, 2,033 for-fee apartments) [1]. [0]: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-2500%7Cbeds%3… [1]: https://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/status:open%7Cprice:-2500%7Cbeds%3… [2]:…

If the owner renting the apartment goes through a real estate broker, that broker charges some fee for their services (showing the apartment, etc.). In NYC, the fee is often paid by the incoming tenant. The fee, from what I've seen, ranges from 1 month's rent to 15% of annual rent (12 * .15 = 1.8 month's rent). If you're renting a $3000/month place with a 15% broker fee, you owe the broker $5400 up front when you sign the lease. Brokers and sites that I've found claim you'll pay a broker one way or the other: if the owner pays the broker, then the owner increases the rent to cover the cost. If you find a "No fee" apartment (a designation that anyone who's rented in NYC knows, and it has a special status and banner on https://streeteasy.com/) then your rent is increased to match the market anyway. Even if it's true that as a renter you pay for brokers no matter what, it's the deceit in advertising in NYC that irritates me. Brokers happily list "$3000/month" rent, and you have to email them to find out what their fee is. If you amortize the fee across a 12-month lease, that "$3000/month" might actually be $3250/month (1 month broker fee) or $3450/month (15% broker fee).

As an apartment owner in Manhattan, I find one part of the study surprising. Most Co-ops and Condos (two types of apartment financial structuring that is common in NYC), explicitly ban AirBnB rental. The apartment I own, in a fancy part of the city (Upper East Side), penalises the owner $350 for first infraction, and the fines escalate for each subsequent infraction. Most Co-ops even prohibit non-owners living in the building (they cannot rent it out). I wonder who these people are, that are able to buy AirBnB'able apartments. I just searched Streeteasy.com, a popular NYC real estate listing site for Airbnb and I was not able find any listings (Query: https://streeteasy.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=airbnb&com… I also looked at the data-source in the Citylab article (Airdna.com) and I see that I would earn 10% more by Airbnb'ing my apartment than finding a tenant. For me this 10% is not worth optimising for, considering the tenants go through a credit evaluation process, I don't risk any vacancy and I do not have to change the sheets every other week.

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You're minutes from the A,C, and G, but how long is your commute to Manhattan (and where in Manhattan)? How reliable are those trains (eg. on the weekends)? Is it safe at night? Mind if I ask where in Brooklyn? (I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just genuinely curious because I'm actually looking for a place right now) Sure you can live in Harlem for cheap, but you're a bit removed and it doesn't exactly feel safe. These days it's gotten better, but I still wouldn't recommend a woman walk alone there at night. Living in what feels like a giant housing project isn't exactly what I consider the desirable "Manhattan" experience. Mind linking me some of those good listings? I spent the last 3 years in the East Village, most apartments there in that price range are subpar by modern day standards. They're going to be obviously converted apartments with absurdly small bedrooms, no living room area, odd layouts, broker's fees (10-15% of the first year's rent), 5th floor walkups, Avenue C, etc. I'm not saying that deals don't exist, but they are very hard to come by. Here's a StreetEasy search for 2BRs under $3,000 without broker's fees - I'm not tempted to snag any of these: http://streeteasy.com/for-rent/nyc/price:-3000%7Cbeds%3E=2%7Cno_fee:1?… I'm not too familiar with deep Brooklyn, but I know you can find alright studios there for $1,200/person. I'm just not sure if the tradeoff of increased commute and reduced safety due to living…

There are such precedents. Right wing lawyers and bloggers tend to deny that such precedents exist, and left wing lawyers and bloggers tend to say that they have more meaning than they probably do—but there are precedents. Probably the best example in Linda Greenhouse's essay for the NYT (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/never-before/?pagewant… is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (it prevents hospitals from refusing care to uninsured patients; this coerces hospitals into commerce. (That a law had to be passed to make this the standard is IMO disgusting. Obviously the Hippocratic oath applies only to doctors and not to hospital bean counters.) It's worth noting (a few paragraphs later) that EMTLA has a knock-on effect, too: you or your employer pays for all of this uninsured/underinsured treatment through higher premiums. Greenhouse: "The uninsured don’t exist apart from commerce. To the contrary, their medical care results in some $43 billion of uncovered health care costs annually and, through cost-shifting, adds $1,000 a year to the average cost of a family insurance policy. People who don’t want to buy broccoli or a new car can eat brussels sprouts or take the bus, but those without health insurance are in commerce whether they like it or not." This 1986 law actually makes your insurance more expensive, forcing you into commerce that you may not be interested in. The flaw with Obamacare—and the only way it could have been passed…

He apparently bought this place in 2016: https://streeteasy.com/blog/craigslist-property/

Just yesterday I was dealing with an auto-formatter for addressing which was failing to record Queens, NY addresses correctly. Google Maps seems to have no problem. https://streeteasy.com/blog/queens-addresses-hyphenated-confusing-stre…

It's unclear, but they do link the postings after you're done, unfortunately it's been rented today https://streeteasy.com/building/62-west-48-street-new_york/5f

Sorry, we definitely have different definitions of townhomes. Where I am from (NYC) a townhouse is typically a 2/3 story build, narrow. With 2/3 units or sometimes split down the middle giving you 4 or 6 units or as high as 12 usually, often with an english basement and a back yard. This is what I am talking about https://streeteasy.com/blog/types-of-townhouses-in-nyc/ DC is full of them too, so is boston. Googling NYC Park Slope Townhouse would get you tons of images of nicer ones, but there's tons of cheap vinyl sided ones that are just fine.

Yorkville 2 bed/2 bath search https://streeteasy.com/2-bedroom-apartments-for-sale/yorkville/baths%3… Sort by price. Absolute cheapest is $875k. 7 pages of listings, scrolling to the mid-way point at bottom page 3 / top page 4 puts you at $1.4M. (quick & dirty med-avg proxy) Make it a 3 bed and probably add $200k

Thanks! I was looking in https://opencorporates.com (for Georgia) but I didn't know what to look for. Super interesting: "Today, there are over 1,100 HDFC coops that make up a significant part of the fabric of New York City's affordable housing stock. " https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/services-and-information/hdfc.page "5,578 NYC Co-ops and Apartments for Sale" https://streeteasy.com/coops/nyc Though many of these might be from giant projects, it's still interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell%E2%80%93Lama_Housing_Program This is what you can do if you don't delegate all the management of the housing market to the Fed.

I used streeteasy[0] almost exclusively during my home search. They label every listing by home type (co-op, condo, townhouse, etc) I don't think I found a condo under 800k, while there are plenty of co-ops across the boroughs, including Manhattan, in the 300-800k range. EDIT: just noted you said "in another place". In my experience it's very hard to find this information in America outside NYC without investigating individual buildings. [0]: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/nyc/price:300000-800000

If you can't afford an apartment on 250K you need to take a serious look at your spending and figure out what you actually want to prioritize. Sure, you won't be picking up a $3M apartment overlooking Central Park, but toooooons of Brooklyn and Queens should be affordable to you with that level of income. I got a mortgage a few years ago when I was only pulling down $180K and I was approved for up to $1MM loan, most of the city is doable at that budget. https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/brooklyn/price:-1000000?view=map

> Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median Is the median the correct benchmark? The median household income in NYC was $67k in 2021 [0]. Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the median [1] when you could be a software engineer and make 3x as much? It's not just a matter of trinkets and baubles. That difference allows you to comfortably afford a nice family sized apartment [2] in a safe area with a convenient commute. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork/HSG010… [1] https://teachnyc.net/about-our-schools/salary-and-benefits [2] https://streeteasy.com/building/15-gates-avenue-brooklyn/h

Sure; the market has definitely gotten tighter. There's a reason I don't live there! That being said, here's a 650 sq ft rental in the East Village that sounds a lot like yours[1], at $3150. Previous listing was at $2.6k, and I suspect the current heat isn't going to last. [1]: https://streeteasy.com/building/422-east-10-street-new_york/4r

When I say "as of right" I mean that all you need is ownership of the lot in question. The Empire State Building was built only with ownership of the lot it was built on and the owner was legally allowed to build as tall as they want. Nearly all tall buildings in New York these days are legally built through assembling "air rights." Zoning has predetermined height/FAR limits for all lots, but in certain areas it is possible to sell currently unused rights and transfer them to the owner of another lot. This allows some developers to build taller but keeps overall neighborhood square footage around a prescribed limit. This way, you can build a spiky tower or two here and there on Billionaire's Row (the general name for the area) but the street cannot become a wall of them. More info on air rights: https://streeteasy.com/blog/what-are-nyc-air-rights-all-about/

$1800 is the very very low end for Manhattan (and likely a reflection of COVID price drops): https://streeteasy.com/studios-for-rent/manhattan

I just added a caveat about that, but many of the top of market neighborhoods people tend to go for here haven't dropped nearly that much (e.g West Village area, Chelsea, UES/UWS). NYC is huge and that drop is not spread equally. Guessing it isn't in SF either, but it seems 31% is going to hit every neighborhood at least a good deal. Edited to add to this, see the spread in June: https://www.renthop.com/studies/nyc/renthop-2020-subway-rent-map-rents… West 4th = West Village, up 7% YOY mid pandemic, even as other neighborhoods saw more drops. Also see the trend here as editorialized around NYC on pace to overtake SF as the most expensive rent market: https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ A better graph near the bottom of this article to show how small the dip is for rentals: https://streeteasy.com/blog/august-2020-market-reports/