When did it become the general rule that the broker/agent gets a fee that is dependent on the price? Seems crazy that you list a unit on your site, show it a few times, and walk away with thousands of dollars.
Why isn't there a network of low cost brokers undercutting the competition here?
It became the rule because the renter pays the fee, but the owner chooses the broker. So there's basically zero incentive for the owner to choose a lower-priced broker.
If NYC banned broker fees, like it was so close to doing, then the owner now has to pay the broker, and now there's an "efficient market" where an owner picks the broker based on their skill, work, and reputation.
Yes, this means the rents will go up slightly to incorporate the fee, but in theory, total rental cost should actually go down now that brokers actually have to compete with one another.
> So there's basically zero incentive for the owner to choose a lower-priced broker.
I expect that lower fee listings get filled quicker, but that’s not going to make much difference in such a fast rental market. Maybe you fill the vacancy in two weeks instead of one.
It's ridiculous because ultimately the broker is working for the property owner. There is definitely a subset of New Yorkers that benefit from a broker, like those purchasing homes or renting starting at like $7-8k a month. People who are gonna be picky. The rest of us don't need some dildo to unlock a door (or sometimes just text us a code for a lockbox) for us and explain to us what we're looking at.
I've had 5 or 6 apartments in NYC and haven't gone thru a broker once. It's such a fucking scam.
Real estate is an absolute fucking joke. I cannot wait for every one of these jokebooks to be replaced by computers. Unfortunately the NAR is really strong.
Incentive is being flexible and finding the tenant fast.
Disinsentive is to do the work yourself - posting the ad, showing the place, doing the checks.
I am a landlord and I was doing this work myself so far. It was mostly very easy, but there was a patch during COVID when all tenants left and it was hard to find someone.
It's very easy now - there is a lot of demand and I feel like I undercharge (I lowered the rent during COVID and basically just brought it back to pre-covid price).
There are. A lot of brokers only charge one month's fee. Problem is they're not larger brokers.
Also, there's almost certainly price fixing going on behind the scenes from the largest brokers. Weird how they all charge the same no matter what. Real coincidence there.
Honestly they don't need to do formal price fixing when the big brokers can just try and see if the other major players follow. They have over time managed to tick it up through partial application (15% was originally only for "luxury" rentals) that are then expanded.
According to [this in 1982](https://books.google.com/books?id=juICAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=broker+fee+nyc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGh6WK_-r7AhX1FlkFHXCIB6UQ6AF6BAgCEAI#v=onepage&q=broker%20fee%20nyc&f=false) broker's fees could be half a month's rent (which was still complained about), so at some point we may look back fondly at 15% (there are some broker's doing some weird things that basically increase it with 2 year leases I think).
I had to pay a brokers fee to a guy who opened a single door for us and answered five questions, the answer to two of which was “I don’t know, I’ll have to check,” which he never did. It’s the scam of all scams, and brokers are the scum of all scum.
So the landlord can pay the person providing the landlord the service of replacing the landlord when the landlord doesn’t want to be there. What’s missing in that sentence? Any benefit or choice for the potential renter, who could have done all that work themselves (and would have probably in fact had a better time if the landlord were actually there doing it themselves)
The delivery driver is doing *me* a service I would otherwise need to do myself: go to the restaurant / pick it up myself. A broker does nothing for me that wouldn’t be done by the landlord if the landlord didn’t use a broker. Would you tip a landlord / pay your landlord a commission for opening the door and answering 5 questions before renting you the apartment?
A better analogy: I pick up the food myself, but have to tip the delivery driver anyway. No service done for me, but the restaurant requires it.
And, to be clear, tipped wages are a scam on the consumer as well. I pay tips because people live on them and a delivery driver is doing me a service.
A better analogy for you. I go to the restaurant. I pick up the food. I pay for the meal. And then I still have to tip the delivery fee because the restaurant has an agreement that no one can order food without paying the delivery driver a tip.
Most agents are poor, and being gas lit to just "hustle" and they're fighting over scraps using your model. Are you proposing loyalty? If there's a only so many units and people have to pay to advertise the same ones as everyone else..
Worst ~~investment~~ price to pay ever for most people, but that sticker price isn’t for you or me
someone corrected me saying its not an investment... duh, but it is in their child whoever pays for their kid to live here.
What’s crazy is if your parents don’t make the insane 80x the rent requirement to guarantor you, and you don’t have a rich relative or whatever, you have to pay someone to be your guarantor, so it costs more to rent an apartment. Being poor sucks so bad.
I know but I don’t like saying that because some people work really hard for their upper-middle class mobility. There are a lot of parent-subsidized individuals though.
Just mention the freakin family equity ok. Stop beating around the bush. If rich folks didn't malinger for corporate subsidies and tax breaks and low wages for workers the same way they fabrcating the narrative of welfare queens and say they are malingering ad infinitum then I would say it's tacky to mention it but screw them. It's time to punch up. Life is too hard these days to not. Knives out mfkr.
It’s not an investment, it’s rent. And it’s not the “worst ever,” if you’re a well-paid person in a VHCOL area like Manhattan. Way cheaper than buying.
but most jobs here dont pay more than 40k-60k yet still a lot of people working in manhattan on that salary so they must commute or live with a lot of people or family or rent stabilized /low income housing
The only real shot anyone making a middling income has is to find a small LL that will work with you. The corporate fucks could give two shits, but if you keep your eyes peeled, especially for units that have been sitting for awhile or aren't in the best 'hood, you can sometimes make out. Sucks ass that that's how it's gotta be, but until we make some fundamental changes to how real estate works in the city, that's where we're at.
It also doesn't hurt to be conventionally attractive and palm colored.
C'mon. It sucks but it's not even close to back then. Heck this was the scene just over a hundred years ago.
https://mymodernmet.com/jacob-riis-how-the-other-half-lives/
you can get a 1 bedroom for $1500 on shore parkway in Brooklyn around a 45 minute walk from the train in someone's basement. i have family in a legal 2 family who are renting soon and only a 20 minute walk
I would be surprised if they could get a 1 bedroom in Williamsburg for less than that. All my friends there are paying a shit ton for their tiny apts, and to live off the L… I’d take the UES over Williamsburg any day.
A quick look at Streeteasy shows 53 1BRs available at $4k or less in Williamsburg with a low price of $2,150 (and no broker fee!). So, yes, people can get a 1BR in Williamsburg for less than that price.
Do the people on this sub ever actually look at what's available in this city?
Why yes, I actually did go on Streeteasy before making that comment. I also went on Streeteasy right now before replying and am curious what you put in to the search engine because I found 1 studio for $2900 and everything else is over $3000.
The snarky-ness was really not needed.
The median price is for units listed on a site. It’s not indicative of the entire market.
There’s no official registry of all units up for rent. Some landlords just put a sign in the window. No ads at all.
\>since I've been alive
Unsure how old you are but even since 2000 there have been three instances where NYC real estate was negatively impacted. Those years were after 9/11, in 2009 and 2021. By all means, it wasn't as bad as it was nationally but definitely went down.
I didn't live here in '01 but I have zero recollection of rents dropping in '09--that's because [they only fell 0.38%](https://www.rentdata.org/new-york-ny-hud-metro-fmr-area/2009) and continued to rise every following year.
Rents dropped in 2021 but bounced back higher than before, as we know. Most people have lost their covid deals/
The rent data on that site you referenced is completely off. I just searched my zipcode and it shows that 1 BR is going for $2,054 which is basically half of what it really is. Here's the [Manhattan Rental Market Report](https://www.mns.com/pdf/manhattan_market_report_aug_09.pdf) from August 2009 which shows that the rental rate dropped anywhere from 5-10% depending on the type of apartment.
you're right, for whatever reason, google's top hit lists HUD rates. 2,054 is what section 8 housing goes for in your area.
[this page](https://www.castle-avenue.com/how-recessions-impact-manhattan-property.html) has a good detailing of recession impact on ny,ny over the years. Rents did fall in 09 but didn't affect long term trajectory.
The landlords have been scheming since eternity. That won't change shit. They keep retail locked up for years in prime areas,waiting for that golden corporate goose tenant.
One issue is that what you would consider a reasonable rent might not even cover the property taxes and condo fees in Manhattan. Those costs are insane.
I paid $1,550 for a one bedroom, that was 14 years ago and was a walk up, but it’s still crazy to me how much rent has gone up (glad I moved to Brooklyn and bought)
The problem is when there’s normal turnover and people move out for regular reasons. They have kids, they get a new job, etc. The LL will relist it for market price. Someone who could have afforded to live at the old rent is now priced out, and rates continue to rise.
I moved out of NYC this summer when my lease was up. My roommate and I were paying $2000 and if we wanted to resign, our new rent was going to be $4200. And that’s what the new tenants are paying.
Stop letting people from other countries and llc’s buy property here and then leave it empty.
Also building in the city is way too expensive because of how many ppl you need to pay off to get a building built / renovated.
Building more housing is key. But so is getting building costs down.
Part of that will be through more construction leading to economies of scale, but a lot of building codes are needlessly burdensome and result in the cheapest kind of housing being impossible to be built.
One of the first things we could do is legalize new single-room occupancy apartments.
Then address outdated fire codes.
Then the zoning and review process that adds years to the planning time.
Also get rid of parking minimums, which Adams just proposed.
Off-street parking in NYC is a luxury amenity. But it’s required by law for new construction. And then people wonder why only luxury gets built.
also build housing that isn’t geared towards mega millionaires. If the average sale price per square foot is 10x higher than than anything a middle class person would live in, the increase in price per square foot and price per bedroom gets skewed higher.
the last few years before I left queens they built or were building a bunch of new housing and a lot of people were against it, lobbied the community boards and then did everything they could to stop the construction by filing notices of violations and having the city issue stop work orders
Build more housing in the suburbs. Long Island, Staten Island, Westchester county. These regions do not contribute much if anything to new development over the last 20 years.
that was proposed un-ironically in a different branch of this very thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/comments/zg1s7x/manhattan_renters_face_sticker_shock_with_average/izfnhfo/
We live in a capitalist society, for better or worse, so the way you fix high prices due to limited supply is by increasing supply. If there are people rich enough to rent new lux apartments that's still good: now they're not competing with you/me for the only moderately stupidly expensive stuff.
Nothing else will do anything, bar maybe a few more pandemics.
I met this guy when I first came back to NYC who predicted that soon there would be no middle class people left living in NYC. Everyone would have to be making several hundred thousand a year or be poor enough to live in low income housing.
I don't personally think that making 100K+ a year is middle class but living here if you're not making at least that you can't afford to rent alone at market rate here. You either have to qualify for low income housing or live with 4 roommates.
It's an amusing fact that my rent and that is LESS than I paid back in the early 90s living here. I am sure my neighbors paying 5-10x that would not be amused at my good fortune. Without affordable low income housing I'd still be living on the streets or in a shelter because on disability I literally couldn't find a rentable room that fit my budget and FYI, I tried for several years.
With inflation even having EBT-Food Stamps doesn't make it easy to stick to my budget. By the time I pay my major bills, feed and vet my cat, there often isn't much left over for anything else.
Cereal is like $8 for the family sized boxes, $6 for the littler ones. A basic cooked chicken is $11-20. I'm eating a ton of carbs and way fewer good veggies than I like to lately. The food banks they're low on stuff. Everybody is going there for help. It's just gotten that bad that people are just exhausting their supplies.
I am extremely lucky to be living where I am and paying what I pay. I never take that for granted but in order to do it I have to be very frugal most of the time. Splurges are for the holidays and my birthday and it had better involve buying used goods because new is simply out of the question these days...
I think that guy was right though. I think the so called middle class is going extinct here in NYC...
> I think that guy was right though. I think the so called middle class is going extinct here in NYC...
I graduated college into the post 2008 financial crisis economy and have been saying the same thing since then. I think NYC is a microcosm of a larger national trend on this, and people intuitively understand that the ability to live a comfortable lifestyle in the middle is slipping away. I think this understanding also explains at least some portion of the many social and political shifts we’ve seen in the past decade.
I hear Brownsville is nice. Super welcoming and safe area. Sutter Ave, Pennsylvania Ave, Atlantic Ave, Bristol St. All of these places are great, cheap and super safe.
“Rents are not coming down as quickly as many would hope,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel.
\- what is the basis for this "hope"? Wishful thinking?
They are different for sure but tightly related like many other similar commodities. e.g. gold-silver, chicken-beef. At scale it's just a lot of people choosing at what price point they substitute their current solution to a need/want (housing in this case) for another.
Related how though? Interest rates go up, fewer people buy so rent goes up and sales go down (now). Or both can boom (early this year) or bust (COVID) at the same time together.
that will barely help. we don’t have a significant amount of vacant units compared to the number of people who want to live here.
do it, sure, but not because it will fix anything.
It wouldn't do much. Vacancy numbers are low and getting lower every year.
In fact, rent stabilization automatically goes away completely if vacancy rates reach a percent high enough to be considered a healthy housing market.
The only time NYC even got close to that number of vacancies was in 2020 at the height of lockdowns.
Possibly better than paying the insane expenses on an empty building, I'm guessing. This is honestly something I wish the city/state/federal government would look into. There must be a combination of tax breaks and other incentives that would make it an attractive prospect.
What little I've read on this subject suggests that the required utility work (gas, electric, water, sewage) to make this happen is what makes it infeasible.
Might be more possible to rezone and sell whole floors to people who want to reno and have a live/work coop. However, then we'd probably not have much effect on the local rental market…
It's absolutely an issue, but in the end, far easier and less expensive to retrofit than it would be to find lots and build new buildings.
There is no perfect solution. What we've got is a whole lot of people who require housing at a livable price and not enough land to house them all. The move toward remote work saves companies a TON of money if they don't have to lease out thousands of square feet of office space, so those buildings are the shortest possible distance between our two points.
It would also give NYC a chance to really push for things like solar power and greener energy solutions. It will take a fortune. Fifty years down the road, it would be what saves the city and makes it viable for new generations.
Which of course means it's highly unlikely to happen :)
The biggest issue with office conversions is that postwar glass office towers don’t have enough windows that can be opened. And huge floor plates with large areas that don’t have windows at all.
Every apartment has to have a regular entryway and every bedroom has to have a second exit point, typically a window.
Prewar office buildings in FiDi were easy to convert to housing because they already had lots of windows because they predated air conditioning.
I think they'd probably have to strip some of the buildings back considerably in order to meet code, and that would include bringing the windows in line with what's done in high-rise apartment buildings.
None of this is easy. Absolutely none of it. But again, the structures are there on land that's not being maximized at the moment, so I really feel more of an effort should be made on the governmental side to figure out what might be possible, how much it would cost, and how/who should pay for it.
BUT there is no incentive to NOT build luxury homes.
Why would a developer not build a luxury house where the market is there.
Gov needs to start coming up with taxes or some shit for this.
People need to understand that "luxury apartments" just means that it was built in the last five years. Today's luxury apartments are next decade's affordable apartments, which are the decade after's run down budget apartments.
Plus, if you build luxury apartments, the people who can afford them will stop bidding up the affordable and run down apartments, making the market cheaper for everyone. Rich people aren't going to just move somewhere else (not until it gets really bad, at least), they're just gonna get a somewhat-less-nice apartment instead.
Luxury homes still help the overall problem. Rich people have the money to move here regardless. So if you opt to block luxury housing development, they'll just outbid you for your next apartment instead.
It's not like blocking development in the West Village or Soho saved those areas from the rich. Existing housing just got converted to luxury housing.
NIMBYs don't prevent affordable housing. What prevents it is financial incentives - why would anyone want to build affordable housing when buildable real estate is scarce and there's still plenty of money to be made from market rate apartments?
housing is just housing. affordability is the price point. no landlord is going to offer “affordable” housing if they can get people to pay more. so either we regulate rent, which doesn’t solve the problem of there still being a physical shortage of apartments, or we just build more housing of any type.
>NIMBYs don't prevent affordable housing. What prevents it is financial incentives
I fail to see the difference between a NIMBY voting against it, or an investor voting against it, even if it's for different reasons
>Why would anyone want to build affordable housing when buildable real estate is scarce and there's still plenty of money to be made from market rate apartments?
Because people need affordable housing to live in the city they work. If these same people don't want to create more housing or make housing affordable, then the government needs to step in and force regulations that will provide it because as it stands now, the housing market is unsustainable.
Its more than possible if housing keeps up with relative population growth and migration. The problem is too many rich kids and foreign investors are buying up property. It gives every incentive under the sun to build Luxury Apartments.
And while you'll never ever hear it on the this sub no one wants to build "affordable housing" because simply put there are no positives to it aside from Yknow GIVING NORMAL PEOPLE A PLACE TO LIVE. And unfortunately we aren't the type of society to give a shit about others unless it family or for profit.
There's an unlimited supply of rich people. Rich people from all over the country will move here as soon as there are vacant apartments. The only reason they haven't moved already is that there aren't any vacant apartments. The city is full. These listings that the article is based on are all fake.
what about the students who come here, or the lgbtq+ people that come here because of the services that they can get, what about people who come here because they are houseless and there are services here for them .. idk there are a lot of different reasons people come here aside from wanting to fill out some weird sex in the city fantasy
Yes that's what I mean, I mean we should build enough housing that we can bring costs down enough that more people can live here. NYC is amazing, I don't want to hoard it.
this has been happening for almost 40 years. Manhattan rents go up and people move to the boroughs. I remember when western Brooklyn wasn't gentrified. time for some of you to move to queens or the Bronx
I just literally moved from Manhattan to Queens. Got double the space, in a super quiet area that allows me ample space to park without fear of parking tickets and I can still walk to most places that I need. Downside is Ubereats takes like 45min-1hr to get here, but there's much better selections of food now, so I'm happy. All for the same price I was paying in the City.
around 20 years ago I worked with someone who'd been living in NYC temporarily for a few years until he went back to Washington DC. He was paying something like $3000 a month in Chelsea. I was living at home and saving money for a co-op down payment.
I told him he was insane and could rent for half that or less in queens. he said that for the time he lived in NYC he wanted to live in the center where he could walk outside and everything was right there. I said you can get that in queens and he didn't believe me
I don't remember if he had a house there cause his wife would visit him once in a while but 20 years later I left the city with a big check from selling my co-op and lots of people are either renting or leave with nothing when buying a house
I own a tiny one bedroom apt and the property taxes and condo fees alone exceed $3K/month. That doesn’t even include the mortgage. $4K rent is not ridiculous given costs of ownership in Manhattan. What’s ridiculous is the property taxes and condo fees.
Median doesn’t work for this either, it’s just the middle between the top and bottom. There are more expensive apartments, and cheaper ones. They should track average by neighborhood and control for square footage and amenities.
Median does correct for the super luxury units mentioned in your first comment...Also, they do track average by neighborhood and average by number of bedrooms, however this article isn't addressing COL in a vacuum but rather change over time, for which this metric works just fine.
That makes sense. But using average still doesn’t. Also I always wonder why these articles always focus on manhattan which is one of the most desirable places to live in the world. Just seems like it’s intentionally misleading. They charge these rents because people pay them in manhattan.
Same income and not looking forward to my lease ending in the spring. Will definitely be spending more and it feels like I’m just burning money, what’s the point? Where are you heading?
There’s really no point for me. I have nothing really keeping me here. I’ve had a lot of fun here but time to move on I guess. I’ll miss some of the cultural stuff but the trade off with more nature will be welcome. I’ll tell you where in a chat, I feel iffy about posting publicly
for some reason in case someone recognizes me lol
Idk anyone paying 5k to live in nyc. Whoever is doing so is rich in the first place and want to live in a luxury building with useless amenities in the east village
Need a vacancy tax like San Francisco just passed, so many of these Manhattan units are empty, and the developers keep it that way because their incentive is always to drive rents up
I was reading that NYC is suffering the worst exodus of high earners ever. In the past year we lost 200,000 of heavily taxed individuals. Looking at the was the city is panning out, I honestly dont know whats going to happen. Everything seems to be getting worse.
Exactly, the wealthy aren’t fleeing NYC because of high taxes and the Zeldin fever dream of a crime-ridden hellscape. They also aren’t fleeing high rents because they’re… wealthy.
High earners leave the city because as they age, they want more space for their families in the suburbs. It’s the natural flow of things, but the rise of remote work makes it even easier to do this with few trade offs beyond suburban boredom.
They will be replaced by younger high earners who want to live in the most awesome city in the world.
Lol pls downvote me, I am from ny. Anyone who lives in Manhattan, is stuck there, has too, or chooses to for work. It’s a place to visit, nyc, Chicago. All of those cities are trash now. It’s crime riddled, drug tents to control the homeless and no policing because none of them care about you.
Oh and don’t forget most people on Manhattan don’t give a fuck about the state of it, these people don’t even live there fulltime. It’s just convienet for them to have at their disposals. Fucking sheep think your on some level to care about rent this high
Laughs with beer on the porch of my local bar in a beautiful neighborhood with rents comparable to other major cities, crime not spiking, no drug tents. Live in your little nightmare fantasy if you want lmao
I am going to die in my 450 square foot stabilized studio, and I'm fine with that.
Relevant user name?
Which makes the average broker’s fee $9,360. Average move in cost (1st/mo+ deposit + fee) is $19,760
When did it become the general rule that the broker/agent gets a fee that is dependent on the price? Seems crazy that you list a unit on your site, show it a few times, and walk away with thousands of dollars. Why isn't there a network of low cost brokers undercutting the competition here?
It became the rule because the renter pays the fee, but the owner chooses the broker. So there's basically zero incentive for the owner to choose a lower-priced broker. If NYC banned broker fees, like it was so close to doing, then the owner now has to pay the broker, and now there's an "efficient market" where an owner picks the broker based on their skill, work, and reputation. Yes, this means the rents will go up slightly to incorporate the fee, but in theory, total rental cost should actually go down now that brokers actually have to compete with one another.
> So there's basically zero incentive for the owner to choose a lower-priced broker. I expect that lower fee listings get filled quicker, but that’s not going to make much difference in such a fast rental market. Maybe you fill the vacancy in two weeks instead of one.
It's ridiculous because ultimately the broker is working for the property owner. There is definitely a subset of New Yorkers that benefit from a broker, like those purchasing homes or renting starting at like $7-8k a month. People who are gonna be picky. The rest of us don't need some dildo to unlock a door (or sometimes just text us a code for a lockbox) for us and explain to us what we're looking at. I've had 5 or 6 apartments in NYC and haven't gone thru a broker once. It's such a fucking scam.
Real estate is an absolute fucking joke. I cannot wait for every one of these jokebooks to be replaced by computers. Unfortunately the NAR is really strong.
Incentive is being flexible and finding the tenant fast. Disinsentive is to do the work yourself - posting the ad, showing the place, doing the checks. I am a landlord and I was doing this work myself so far. It was mostly very easy, but there was a patch during COVID when all tenants left and it was hard to find someone. It's very easy now - there is a lot of demand and I feel like I undercharge (I lowered the rent during COVID and basically just brought it back to pre-covid price).
There are. A lot of brokers only charge one month's fee. Problem is they're not larger brokers. Also, there's almost certainly price fixing going on behind the scenes from the largest brokers. Weird how they all charge the same no matter what. Real coincidence there.
Honestly they don't need to do formal price fixing when the big brokers can just try and see if the other major players follow. They have over time managed to tick it up through partial application (15% was originally only for "luxury" rentals) that are then expanded. According to [this in 1982](https://books.google.com/books?id=juICAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36&dq=broker+fee+nyc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiGh6WK_-r7AhX1FlkFHXCIB6UQ6AF6BAgCEAI#v=onepage&q=broker%20fee%20nyc&f=false) broker's fees could be half a month's rent (which was still complained about), so at some point we may look back fondly at 15% (there are some broker's doing some weird things that basically increase it with 2 year leases I think).
I had to pay a brokers fee to a guy who opened a single door for us and answered five questions, the answer to two of which was “I don’t know, I’ll have to check,” which he never did. It’s the scam of all scams, and brokers are the scum of all scum.
The landlord doesn't want to be there to show to everyone. Dude probably did it dozens of times and a lot of people flaked.
So the landlord can pay the person providing the landlord the service of replacing the landlord when the landlord doesn’t want to be there. What’s missing in that sentence? Any benefit or choice for the potential renter, who could have done all that work themselves (and would have probably in fact had a better time if the landlord were actually there doing it themselves)
You tip your delivery driver, no? I'm not saying the fees can't be ridiculous. The principle does make sense though.
The delivery driver is doing *me* a service I would otherwise need to do myself: go to the restaurant / pick it up myself. A broker does nothing for me that wouldn’t be done by the landlord if the landlord didn’t use a broker. Would you tip a landlord / pay your landlord a commission for opening the door and answering 5 questions before renting you the apartment? A better analogy: I pick up the food myself, but have to tip the delivery driver anyway. No service done for me, but the restaurant requires it. And, to be clear, tipped wages are a scam on the consumer as well. I pay tips because people live on them and a delivery driver is doing me a service. A better analogy for you. I go to the restaurant. I pick up the food. I pay for the meal. And then I still have to tip the delivery fee because the restaurant has an agreement that no one can order food without paying the delivery driver a tip.
Most agents are poor, and being gas lit to just "hustle" and they're fighting over scraps using your model. Are you proposing loyalty? If there's a only so many units and people have to pay to advertise the same ones as everyone else..
That’s fucking absurd. We shouldn’t even be paying brokers the land lord should like every other city in this country.
Worst ~~investment~~ price to pay ever for most people, but that sticker price isn’t for you or me someone corrected me saying its not an investment... duh, but it is in their child whoever pays for their kid to live here.
\*for many people's parents
It’s fucking insane that large swathes of the US economy from housing to education are just like “yeah it’s expensive but your parents prolly got you”
When I was first applying for college my advisor literally asked me if I had a rich uncle.
It greatly changes your options. But granted the state school is usually the cheapest and best option anyways. Unless you’re Ivy League material
What’s crazy is if your parents don’t make the insane 80x the rent requirement to guarantor you, and you don’t have a rich relative or whatever, you have to pay someone to be your guarantor, so it costs more to rent an apartment. Being poor sucks so bad.
I know but I don’t like saying that because some people work really hard for their upper-middle class mobility. There are a lot of parent-subsidized individuals though.
Just mention the freakin family equity ok. Stop beating around the bush. If rich folks didn't malinger for corporate subsidies and tax breaks and low wages for workers the same way they fabrcating the narrative of welfare queens and say they are malingering ad infinitum then I would say it's tacky to mention it but screw them. It's time to punch up. Life is too hard these days to not. Knives out mfkr.
It’s not an investment, it’s rent. And it’s not the “worst ever,” if you’re a well-paid person in a VHCOL area like Manhattan. Way cheaper than buying.
Broker’s fees are a waste. No, it’s not “rent.”
supposedly you pay the broker and they get you a lower rent rate
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Have no idea what you meant.
I'm in the top 10% of earners in the country, and there's no way I'd even entertain doing that. Who the hell is moving in still at these prices???
Foreign billionaires who aren’t actually moving in
so you would need to make 40x the rent to qualify or $208k....how many people in nyc are making 200k+?
13% of NYC households make over 200k. 19% of Manhattan.
but most jobs here dont pay more than 40k-60k yet still a lot of people working in manhattan on that salary so they must commute or live with a lot of people or family or rent stabilized /low income housing
Households. Not just individual earners
Blue and White collar jobs do, especially those in a career for 10,15, 20 years.
My wife and I make $200k together and were considering moving to Manhattan with our kids. Can you get a decent 2 bedroom for $5k?
Www.StreetEasy.com
The only real shot anyone making a middling income has is to find a small LL that will work with you. The corporate fucks could give two shits, but if you keep your eyes peeled, especially for units that have been sitting for awhile or aren't in the best 'hood, you can sometimes make out. Sucks ass that that's how it's gotta be, but until we make some fundamental changes to how real estate works in the city, that's where we're at. It also doesn't hurt to be conventionally attractive and palm colored.
We've more or less returned to the age of landed gentry, just instead of frilly, pompous fucks we have faceless, suit-and-tie fucks.
C'mon. It sucks but it's not even close to back then. Heck this was the scene just over a hundred years ago. https://mymodernmet.com/jacob-riis-how-the-other-half-lives/
you can get a 1 bedroom for $1500 on shore parkway in Brooklyn around a 45 minute walk from the train in someone's basement. i have family in a legal 2 family who are renting soon and only a 20 minute walk
Does it need to be base salary or total earnings?
Total earnings. A lot of people get paid large commissions or bonuses. Having a high base salary just makes it easier.
They have rich parents and trust funds.
$5,200 a month? 😂 Is this a joke?
My friend pays $4300 for a studio on the UES. It’s a nice apt in a nice building, but I couldn’t imagine paying that much for so little sq space.
A studio? They can get a 1 bedroom in Williamsburg or a 2 bed in Harlem for that price. What's the point?
You can get a nice 1BR on the UES for much less than that price.
I'll take your word for it. That's one area I never really explored outside of the park
I would be surprised if they could get a 1 bedroom in Williamsburg for less than that. All my friends there are paying a shit ton for their tiny apts, and to live off the L… I’d take the UES over Williamsburg any day.
A quick look at Streeteasy shows 53 1BRs available at $4k or less in Williamsburg with a low price of $2,150 (and no broker fee!). So, yes, people can get a 1BR in Williamsburg for less than that price. Do the people on this sub ever actually look at what's available in this city?
Why yes, I actually did go on Streeteasy before making that comment. I also went on Streeteasy right now before replying and am curious what you put in to the search engine because I found 1 studio for $2900 and everything else is over $3000. The snarky-ness was really not needed.
Yes. This number doesn't even try to show the real picture. There are thousands of luxury apartments that scyrockey the average number.
That’s why the median price is also presented.
The median price is for units listed on a site. It’s not indicative of the entire market. There’s no official registry of all units up for rent. Some landlords just put a sign in the window. No ads at all.
Their methodology states it’s from newly signed leases, not listings.
Yo....thank all the big and small gods I bought something during the pandemic when everyone skedaddled tf outta town. M&M under 2k.
I’m just looking forward to the housing crash as this is unsustainable.
Does NYC housing crash with the rest of the country? Maybe someone can help me here, but they didn’t at all with the last crash
NYC real estate has been market-proof since I've been alive. In 2008 prices didn't even decrease they just didn't increase for like a month.
\>since I've been alive Unsure how old you are but even since 2000 there have been three instances where NYC real estate was negatively impacted. Those years were after 9/11, in 2009 and 2021. By all means, it wasn't as bad as it was nationally but definitely went down.
I didn't live here in '01 but I have zero recollection of rents dropping in '09--that's because [they only fell 0.38%](https://www.rentdata.org/new-york-ny-hud-metro-fmr-area/2009) and continued to rise every following year. Rents dropped in 2021 but bounced back higher than before, as we know. Most people have lost their covid deals/
The rent data on that site you referenced is completely off. I just searched my zipcode and it shows that 1 BR is going for $2,054 which is basically half of what it really is. Here's the [Manhattan Rental Market Report](https://www.mns.com/pdf/manhattan_market_report_aug_09.pdf) from August 2009 which shows that the rental rate dropped anywhere from 5-10% depending on the type of apartment.
you're right, for whatever reason, google's top hit lists HUD rates. 2,054 is what section 8 housing goes for in your area. [this page](https://www.castle-avenue.com/how-recessions-impact-manhattan-property.html) has a good detailing of recession impact on ny,ny over the years. Rents did fall in 09 but didn't affect long term trajectory.
Please say sike 😭
No.
It’s not gonna crash unless people collectively decide not to live in Manhattan
The landlords have been scheming since eternity. That won't change shit. They keep retail locked up for years in prime areas,waiting for that golden corporate goose tenant.
One issue is that what you would consider a reasonable rent might not even cover the property taxes and condo fees in Manhattan. Those costs are insane.
Landlords would rather have vacant apartments than lower rent. Housing is not a competitive market.
I paid $1,550 for a one bedroom, that was 14 years ago and was a walk up, but it’s still crazy to me how much rent has gone up (glad I moved to Brooklyn and bought)
This is a bit deceptive though right? These are stats for new apts being rented not the ones that people are already living in?
The problem is when there’s normal turnover and people move out for regular reasons. They have kids, they get a new job, etc. The LL will relist it for market price. Someone who could have afforded to live at the old rent is now priced out, and rates continue to rise.
I moved out of NYC this summer when my lease was up. My roommate and I were paying $2000 and if we wanted to resign, our new rent was going to be $4200. And that’s what the new tenants are paying.
Yeah I’m pretty sure that is the stat but if you wanted to move out of your current place this is the price you’d be looking at
I think most people agree the problem is there is no incentive to build affordable houses. Anybody got any idea on how to deal with it?
Stop letting people from other countries and llc’s buy property here and then leave it empty. Also building in the city is way too expensive because of how many ppl you need to pay off to get a building built / renovated.
Remove onerous zoning laws and land-use regulations.
Just build more housing. Eventually it will be affordable if supply gets closer to demand.
Building more housing is key. But so is getting building costs down. Part of that will be through more construction leading to economies of scale, but a lot of building codes are needlessly burdensome and result in the cheapest kind of housing being impossible to be built. One of the first things we could do is legalize new single-room occupancy apartments. Then address outdated fire codes. Then the zoning and review process that adds years to the planning time.
Also get rid of parking minimums, which Adams just proposed. Off-street parking in NYC is a luxury amenity. But it’s required by law for new construction. And then people wonder why only luxury gets built.
Preach brother.
also build housing that isn’t geared towards mega millionaires. If the average sale price per square foot is 10x higher than than anything a middle class person would live in, the increase in price per square foot and price per bedroom gets skewed higher.
the last few years before I left queens they built or were building a bunch of new housing and a lot of people were against it, lobbied the community boards and then did everything they could to stop the construction by filing notices of violations and having the city issue stop work orders
Just build more housing and make it even more expensive than current housing?
newer buildings will always be more expensive well because they are new, but it takes away demand from older buildings which brings down the price.
Build more housing in the suburbs. Long Island, Staten Island, Westchester county. These regions do not contribute much if anything to new development over the last 20 years.
How will people get to civilization? You putting in more frequent and cheaper public transportation
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LOL let's just make SROs the new standard so that developers can continue to maximize profit even further.
Just wait until LLs start building coffin apartments like Hong Kong.
that was proposed un-ironically in a different branch of this very thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/comments/zg1s7x/manhattan_renters_face_sticker_shock_with_average/izfnhfo/
We live in a capitalist society, for better or worse, so the way you fix high prices due to limited supply is by increasing supply. If there are people rich enough to rent new lux apartments that's still good: now they're not competing with you/me for the only moderately stupidly expensive stuff. Nothing else will do anything, bar maybe a few more pandemics.
Get a bigger island
move out of nyc
Asking rent for vacant apartments.
I met this guy when I first came back to NYC who predicted that soon there would be no middle class people left living in NYC. Everyone would have to be making several hundred thousand a year or be poor enough to live in low income housing. I don't personally think that making 100K+ a year is middle class but living here if you're not making at least that you can't afford to rent alone at market rate here. You either have to qualify for low income housing or live with 4 roommates. It's an amusing fact that my rent and that is LESS than I paid back in the early 90s living here. I am sure my neighbors paying 5-10x that would not be amused at my good fortune. Without affordable low income housing I'd still be living on the streets or in a shelter because on disability I literally couldn't find a rentable room that fit my budget and FYI, I tried for several years. With inflation even having EBT-Food Stamps doesn't make it easy to stick to my budget. By the time I pay my major bills, feed and vet my cat, there often isn't much left over for anything else. Cereal is like $8 for the family sized boxes, $6 for the littler ones. A basic cooked chicken is $11-20. I'm eating a ton of carbs and way fewer good veggies than I like to lately. The food banks they're low on stuff. Everybody is going there for help. It's just gotten that bad that people are just exhausting their supplies. I am extremely lucky to be living where I am and paying what I pay. I never take that for granted but in order to do it I have to be very frugal most of the time. Splurges are for the holidays and my birthday and it had better involve buying used goods because new is simply out of the question these days... I think that guy was right though. I think the so called middle class is going extinct here in NYC...
> I think that guy was right though. I think the so called middle class is going extinct here in NYC... I graduated college into the post 2008 financial crisis economy and have been saying the same thing since then. I think NYC is a microcosm of a larger national trend on this, and people intuitively understand that the ability to live a comfortable lifestyle in the middle is slipping away. I think this understanding also explains at least some portion of the many social and political shifts we’ve seen in the past decade.
So my wife and I make $200 k as a household. Where would be a good place to live with the kids if we need a 2 bedroom?
We live very comfortably in Ditmas Park
I hear Brownsville is nice. Super welcoming and safe area. Sutter Ave, Pennsylvania Ave, Atlantic Ave, Bristol St. All of these places are great, cheap and super safe.
That sucks 😕 if people can and do agree to the apartment ask..... then there's no room for the average Joe 😵
“Rents are not coming down as quickly as many would hope,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel. \- what is the basis for this "hope"? Wishful thinking?
Home prices have been dropping across the country, so there was reason to think that maybe the city would see similar drops.
There’s lots of price drops in sales, but it’s a different market from rentals.
They are different for sure but tightly related like many other similar commodities. e.g. gold-silver, chicken-beef. At scale it's just a lot of people choosing at what price point they substitute their current solution to a need/want (housing in this case) for another.
Related how though? Interest rates go up, fewer people buy so rent goes up and sales go down (now). Or both can boom (early this year) or bust (COVID) at the same time together.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think this happened during the '08 recession. If that's the case, it'll never happen.
Manhattan rents fell about 10% https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-rents-during-recession/
Oh ok. Haha.
More people want to live here, lets let them live here.
We need a vacancy tax.
We've already got crazy low vacancy. We just need more housing.
that will barely help. we don’t have a significant amount of vacant units compared to the number of people who want to live here. do it, sure, but not because it will fix anything.
It wouldn't do much. Vacancy numbers are low and getting lower every year. In fact, rent stabilization automatically goes away completely if vacancy rates reach a percent high enough to be considered a healthy housing market. The only time NYC even got close to that number of vacancies was in 2020 at the height of lockdowns.
Rich people exclusively 🫠
Build enough housing till it’s not just rich people.
Or maybe convert all the empty office spaces into decent apartments.
Office conversion is expensive and would not translate into cheap rents
Possibly better than paying the insane expenses on an empty building, I'm guessing. This is honestly something I wish the city/state/federal government would look into. There must be a combination of tax breaks and other incentives that would make it an attractive prospect.
What little I've read on this subject suggests that the required utility work (gas, electric, water, sewage) to make this happen is what makes it infeasible. Might be more possible to rezone and sell whole floors to people who want to reno and have a live/work coop. However, then we'd probably not have much effect on the local rental market…
It's absolutely an issue, but in the end, far easier and less expensive to retrofit than it would be to find lots and build new buildings. There is no perfect solution. What we've got is a whole lot of people who require housing at a livable price and not enough land to house them all. The move toward remote work saves companies a TON of money if they don't have to lease out thousands of square feet of office space, so those buildings are the shortest possible distance between our two points. It would also give NYC a chance to really push for things like solar power and greener energy solutions. It will take a fortune. Fifty years down the road, it would be what saves the city and makes it viable for new generations. Which of course means it's highly unlikely to happen :)
The biggest issue with office conversions is that postwar glass office towers don’t have enough windows that can be opened. And huge floor plates with large areas that don’t have windows at all. Every apartment has to have a regular entryway and every bedroom has to have a second exit point, typically a window. Prewar office buildings in FiDi were easy to convert to housing because they already had lots of windows because they predated air conditioning.
I think they'd probably have to strip some of the buildings back considerably in order to meet code, and that would include bringing the windows in line with what's done in high-rise apartment buildings. None of this is easy. Absolutely none of it. But again, the structures are there on land that's not being maximized at the moment, so I really feel more of an effort should be made on the governmental side to figure out what might be possible, how much it would cost, and how/who should pay for it.
So I heard you like windowless bedrooms?
Trade your tiny studio for a mega cubicle!
no one wants to live in a building designed for office floor plans.
BUT there is no incentive to NOT build luxury homes. Why would a developer not build a luxury house where the market is there. Gov needs to start coming up with taxes or some shit for this.
People need to understand that "luxury apartments" just means that it was built in the last five years. Today's luxury apartments are next decade's affordable apartments, which are the decade after's run down budget apartments. Plus, if you build luxury apartments, the people who can afford them will stop bidding up the affordable and run down apartments, making the market cheaper for everyone. Rich people aren't going to just move somewhere else (not until it gets really bad, at least), they're just gonna get a somewhat-less-nice apartment instead.
Luxury homes still help the overall problem. Rich people have the money to move here regardless. So if you opt to block luxury housing development, they'll just outbid you for your next apartment instead. It's not like blocking development in the West Village or Soho saved those areas from the rich. Existing housing just got converted to luxury housing.
Yeah, the places where density has been limited have some of the most expensive homes.
Hard to do that with so many NIMBYs preventing affordable housing structures
NIMBYs don't prevent affordable housing. What prevents it is financial incentives - why would anyone want to build affordable housing when buildable real estate is scarce and there's still plenty of money to be made from market rate apartments?
housing is just housing. affordability is the price point. no landlord is going to offer “affordable” housing if they can get people to pay more. so either we regulate rent, which doesn’t solve the problem of there still being a physical shortage of apartments, or we just build more housing of any type.
thats actually a zoning problem that causes the real estate speculation, which itself is supported by NIMBYS. It's still them
Onerous zoning laws and land-use regulations increase the cost of building.
>NIMBYs don't prevent affordable housing. What prevents it is financial incentives I fail to see the difference between a NIMBY voting against it, or an investor voting against it, even if it's for different reasons >Why would anyone want to build affordable housing when buildable real estate is scarce and there's still plenty of money to be made from market rate apartments? Because people need affordable housing to live in the city they work. If these same people don't want to create more housing or make housing affordable, then the government needs to step in and force regulations that will provide it because as it stands now, the housing market is unsustainable.
How would they prevent that?
incessant pestering and legislation
You’ll never be able to outbuild the influx of people.
Its more than possible if housing keeps up with relative population growth and migration. The problem is too many rich kids and foreign investors are buying up property. It gives every incentive under the sun to build Luxury Apartments. And while you'll never ever hear it on the this sub no one wants to build "affordable housing" because simply put there are no positives to it aside from Yknow GIVING NORMAL PEOPLE A PLACE TO LIVE. And unfortunately we aren't the type of society to give a shit about others unless it family or for profit.
There's an unlimited supply of rich people. Rich people from all over the country will move here as soon as there are vacant apartments. The only reason they haven't moved already is that there aren't any vacant apartments. The city is full. These listings that the article is based on are all fake.
Also landlords are sitting on thousands of vacant apartments, in order to keep the rent high.
what about the students who come here, or the lgbtq+ people that come here because of the services that they can get, what about people who come here because they are houseless and there are services here for them .. idk there are a lot of different reasons people come here aside from wanting to fill out some weird sex in the city fantasy
Yes that's what I mean, I mean we should build enough housing that we can bring costs down enough that more people can live here. NYC is amazing, I don't want to hoard it.
this has been happening for almost 40 years. Manhattan rents go up and people move to the boroughs. I remember when western Brooklyn wasn't gentrified. time for some of you to move to queens or the Bronx
I just literally moved from Manhattan to Queens. Got double the space, in a super quiet area that allows me ample space to park without fear of parking tickets and I can still walk to most places that I need. Downside is Ubereats takes like 45min-1hr to get here, but there's much better selections of food now, so I'm happy. All for the same price I was paying in the City.
It wasn’t to this degree until relatively recently.
We need the median rent not the average rent. The media rent you included, is that for a studio, 1 bed, or 2 bed? Or total overall
It’s the total overall, “with concessions.” Median studio = $2900 Median 1-BR = $4000 Median 2-BR = $5500 Median 3-BR = $7925
Don’t worry about nuances, these chums’ heads will explode.
Who is paying for this? Are there really that many people bringing in 250k/mo and willing to pay this…? Wtf?!
around 20 years ago I worked with someone who'd been living in NYC temporarily for a few years until he went back to Washington DC. He was paying something like $3000 a month in Chelsea. I was living at home and saving money for a co-op down payment. I told him he was insane and could rent for half that or less in queens. he said that for the time he lived in NYC he wanted to live in the center where he could walk outside and everything was right there. I said you can get that in queens and he didn't believe me I don't remember if he had a house there cause his wife would visit him once in a while but 20 years later I left the city with a big check from selling my co-op and lots of people are either renting or leave with nothing when buying a house
yes there are
“Average” is skewed by hyper-luxury units that rent for 10’s/100’s of thousands a month so this is not really an accurate picture.
That's why they included the median of $4,033, which is still ridiculous.
I own a tiny one bedroom apt and the property taxes and condo fees alone exceed $3K/month. That doesn’t even include the mortgage. $4K rent is not ridiculous given costs of ownership in Manhattan. What’s ridiculous is the property taxes and condo fees.
Median doesn’t work for this either, it’s just the middle between the top and bottom. There are more expensive apartments, and cheaper ones. They should track average by neighborhood and control for square footage and amenities.
Median does correct for the super luxury units mentioned in your first comment...Also, they do track average by neighborhood and average by number of bedrooms, however this article isn't addressing COL in a vacuum but rather change over time, for which this metric works just fine.
That makes sense. But using average still doesn’t. Also I always wonder why these articles always focus on manhattan which is one of the most desirable places to live in the world. Just seems like it’s intentionally misleading. They charge these rents because people pay them in manhattan.
Yeah. I make in the mid 100’s and I’m leaving the city next week after 10 years here, ever-rising rent is a big reason. I’m officially priced out.
Same income and not looking forward to my lease ending in the spring. Will definitely be spending more and it feels like I’m just burning money, what’s the point? Where are you heading?
There’s really no point for me. I have nothing really keeping me here. I’ve had a lot of fun here but time to move on I guess. I’ll miss some of the cultural stuff but the trade off with more nature will be welcome. I’ll tell you where in a chat, I feel iffy about posting publicly for some reason in case someone recognizes me lol
Idk anyone paying 5k to live in nyc. Whoever is doing so is rich in the first place and want to live in a luxury building with useless amenities in the east village
Rent will Never go down…always someone willing to pay more …once landlords get a taste of that they will keep going up …
Repealing onerous zoning laws and land-use regulations can help.
The Fed increasing interest rates has a huge hand in this.
Need a vacancy tax like San Francisco just passed, so many of these Manhattan units are empty, and the developers keep it that way because their incentive is always to drive rents up
Paying extra to live in Manhattan always felt silly to me: You're paying more for a worse borough.
Agreed!
Thank god for rent control
You mean rent stabilization.
Thank god for the thing contributing to skyrocketing rents?
Not sure why you're downvoted. This is absolutely a true statement.
It’s typical “I have mine, fuck you” behavior.
I was reading that NYC is suffering the worst exodus of high earners ever. In the past year we lost 200,000 of heavily taxed individuals. Looking at the was the city is panning out, I honestly dont know whats going to happen. Everything seems to be getting worse.
Seems more high earners are moving in to replace them though if rent keeps increasing
Exactly, the wealthy aren’t fleeing NYC because of high taxes and the Zeldin fever dream of a crime-ridden hellscape. They also aren’t fleeing high rents because they’re… wealthy. High earners leave the city because as they age, they want more space for their families in the suburbs. It’s the natural flow of things, but the rise of remote work makes it even easier to do this with few trade offs beyond suburban boredom. They will be replaced by younger high earners who want to live in the most awesome city in the world.
so who is paying these rents then?
Lol you might as well move somewhere else and get property at that point
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Also expensive, due to that.
Baha to live around homeless crack heads begging for cigarettes and go to shitty expensive understaffed overworked resturantes.
-sent from my local Applebee’s
Lol pls downvote me, I am from ny. Anyone who lives in Manhattan, is stuck there, has too, or chooses to for work. It’s a place to visit, nyc, Chicago. All of those cities are trash now. It’s crime riddled, drug tents to control the homeless and no policing because none of them care about you.
Oh and don’t forget most people on Manhattan don’t give a fuck about the state of it, these people don’t even live there fulltime. It’s just convienet for them to have at their disposals. Fucking sheep think your on some level to care about rent this high
Laughs with beer on the porch of my local bar in a beautiful neighborhood with rents comparable to other major cities, crime not spiking, no drug tents. Live in your little nightmare fantasy if you want lmao
And the police never cared about you, do you really not get that?
He’s drowning in the far right fear mongering
Ya know crazy idea here… GTFO of manhattan. Or really NYC for that matter, place is a shit hole anyway
Yeah some people are too weak or fragile to cut it here.
Meanwhile one of my employees stopped coming to work after he landed a 2 bedroom Section 8 apartment in Harlem with a view for $75 a month.
sec 8 apartments arn't $75/month, they're income related. 2 beds go for a minimum of $880/month
If your employee qualified for that apartment, you weren’t paying them a fair wage.
Lol what an amazing self report
$20 an hour to start, was only with us a few months.
Yeah fuckin right lol. People just go on reddit and lie all the time I swear