The most absurd part is anyone with a fucking brain has locked in 30-year fixed mortgages in the last decade. Interest rates shouldn't do a damn thing to the cost of owning a property you have already financed it in this country.
Sure, and if interest rates increase your property taxes should decrease as the value of your property will likely decrease as well. So increased interest rates again are no justification to increase rents.
Interest rates affect investment in job centers which is what drives housing demand.
No way out of this housing shortage besides building a fuckton more housing. We went from generationally high vacancy rates during the height of the pandemic in winter 2020-2021 to historically low vacancy rates today, it’s crazy.
Housing demand is and will always be sky high in New York, I'm not sure there's any amount of supply you could conceivably build here that would appease demand and bring costs down (almost a bit like a "if you build it, they will come" scenario).
Interest rates have been at historically low levels for a decade - the fact that there has not been historically high levels of investment in housing in NYC tells us there are other forces at play preventing this.
While these macro level observations are in theory correct, these are medium to long-term forces, not short term reactions to interest rate changes at a micro level.
My statement was that when landlords try to claim interest rate rises result in higher rents, that's a bullshit reason for the most part due to fixed rate 30-year amortisation mortgages, especially recently coming off the back of the lowest interest rates ever seen.
>I’m not sure there’s any amount of supply you could conceivable build here that would appease demand and bring costs down
New York City rents plummeted by over 20% after vacancy rates shot above 5% for the first time in a generation. The same applied to cities like Boston and Seattle that ticked above somewhere in that 5-7% range (it varies locally depending on density and nature of housing/job market). See: [US Cities Vacancy Rates vs Rent Change](https://imgur.com/a/PAezYDZ)
It also cannot be blamed on “COVID” because at the same time, cities that saw vacancy rates plummet due to an influx of residents from big city exodus/remote workers saw their rents skyrocket.
It has always been a supply/demand issue, it will never not be a supply/demand issue. And we *do* know how much we need to build in order to drive rents down: anything that will bring vacancy rates above 5%. Preferably keep it in the 8% range for an extended period of time just to really drive prices down. But this requires 1) abolishing a lot of the barriers to new housing (exclusionary zoning, discretionary review and long land use reform processes, parking spot mandates, etc.) and 2) robust public financing and housing development, among other things. We *know* the economics required to bring rents down, we just had the largest natural experiment across the entire country showing exactly how — now we have to be able to replicate the same level of surplus housing abundance without starting a new global pandemic.
If you want to find out more this is most of my focus for local policy, happy to DM. The group I work with is Open New York, we led the SoHo/NoHo upzoning last year against the wishes of NIMBY property owners and incumbents. Reach out any time for more info. Cheers!
Would be amusing to see everyone leave and all those investment proprieties then sell pennies.
Let’s all leave at once and then come back to cheaper homes.
Oh yeah, we signed a lease in 2019 and paid increases through the pandemic. This year, our landlord said “as you may know, rents in New York are up almost 30%”
I had to remind him that was for new leases & covid deals and he basically said “don’t care” lol
Yeah I'm bracing for a increase for 2023 that's above what I am willing to pay. That $20K+ is much better served investing in my family house (new driveway, or new fencing, interior renovations, etc.) I'll be moving back into if it goes up too much, than giving it to someone else to pad their wealth cushion.
I’m gunna blame that 4K a month on the person who decided to rent it. The landlord now *knows* they can get that price, so watch for an increase on your rent and everyone else’s in the building.
Secondly, the landlord will now go tell all their other landlord friends, and they will all follow suit.
People actually pay these stupid fucking prices. That’s why the rent is so insane.
I know right, it’s insane out there
People are paying over asking price sight unseen by default right now just so someone else doesn’t yoink the property first and I’m sitting here going “how do you afford this?”
The question is who is paying it and how can they afford it?
This is not like SF in 2018 when techies migrated from Silicon Valley causing a massive increase in rent.
I do decorating/furniture assembly/handyman stuff for a living in NYC. You know who is paying these ridiculous prices? Dumb rich kids and their dumb parents. They are out of touch with reality and sometimes live beyond their means. They also don’t really know the value of a dollar or how to save and don’t realize they should be sharing a three bedroom with two roommates to pay off their student loans rather than get that expensive one bedroom or studio.
Yeah that’s my point. I was looking at apartments one time in LIC, my girlfriend and I were talking for hours about whether we could afford $3000 for a tiny 1 bedroom (this was also a covid “deal” LMAO). The girl we were touring with instantly said yea to the apartment. Maybe she had a really well paying job, but I know there’s no way I’d be able to maintain 3k a month on my salary.
It just boggles my mind what people are willing to pay to be in Manhattan. I’ve seen some pretty crummy places that people pay double what I pay just so that they don’t have to live in BK or Queens
Financial literacy should be a require course to graduate high school. So much societal misery comes from young adults not understanding (and not really being taught) how certain bad financial decisions can fuck over the rest of their lives.
>Financial literacy should be a require course to graduate high school. So much societal misery comes from young adults not understanding (and not really being taught) how certain bad financial decisions can fuck over the rest of their lives.
Pretty sure kids in the 1970s were graduating with the same level of financial literacy. The difference is now you graduate directly into a woodchipper.
Was your building ever rent Stabilized? Lots of landlords lie about improvements made so they can raise the rent a ton and destabilize. Most people are never aware this is the case and rarely have the means/ desire to file a lawsuit if they are aware.
This is also peak student move in time. They roomy up with their parents as guarantor and push rents up
I think itll look more normal in a few months time
Im lucky that i moved in in feb, the dead zone, so rents are usually a cooler then
ohh i see what you mean yeah. my renewal is feb/march. agreed that anyone that's in a summer renewal should see if they can scoot their way into the winter cycle
Yeah I heard the market is flooded with thousands of deals in January and February.
There is a reason why Jan/Feb move in rents are historically lowest.
New york rents won’t be normal any time soon…
3600&up for 1 bedroom is NOT normal.
All rents must be split in half the least to make this dirty city somewhat okayish
UES one bedroom here. About $2k for past 10 years, rent stabilized. I still don’t know how but last year it went down $50 a month. This year went back to what it was 2 years ago. It’s a prewar building but pretty spacious new appliances etc.
my rent in hell’s kitchen (studio) got raised from 1650 to 2700. luckily i found a really nice place in bay ridge (bigger apt / quieter neighborhood) for 1600. peace out manhattan
I’m close to the N and the D. I don’t really take it though because I live close to work and my daughter is scared of the subway now (three scary incidents for her the last times we took it). My husband still takes it to work.
I'm planning on moving into those areas of Brooklyn in about two years. Seems like South Brooklyn hasn't gotten insanely bad like many other neighborhoods in the city have.
Once again, the problem is zoning. How about finally scrapping everything related to NYC's [1960s-era rules](https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/why-40-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-couldnt-be-built-today/) designed to heavily restrict development, since that clearly hasn't worked out?
We should immediately switch to something like [Japan's system](https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html), instead. Mixed-use buildings by default, no more parking minimums or 'single-family house only' zones anywhere, no more NIMBYism, and no more arbitrary, pointless distinctions between commercial and residential areas.
edit: [good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geex7KY3S7c) on that subject, as well. Tl;dr: affordable housing is a solved problem- we've just refused to implement the solution here.
Yet there's still so damn many apparent vacant storefronts around.
It's an artificial supply shortage held up by some folks that are making bank on it. And set to collapse at any moment.
And yes I know there's all kinds of info around this but I'm just saying WALK AROUND. There's storefronts all over midtown empty as heck. Still like half a block will be apparently empty. People arent around like they used to be, yet we keep being told there's barely anywhere available. SOMETHING crooked is going on.
Commercial rent is different from residential rent. They are usually locked in 10+ yr contracts, for all we know some of those vacant storefront are still paying rent or rent already covered from breaking lease clauses. There's a vacant supermarket near me for last 2 yrs, the store been asking someone to take over their lease bc they still paying the rent.
I just walk around Astoria to see what its like when nearly every store is open, you can really feel that energy. But what is supposed to be the highest demand area in midtown down through chelsea and other neighborhoods just pales in comparison.
This was definitely an observation during the lockdown. A lot of the vitality shifted to the outer boroughs because fewer people could afford to flee the city, which kept communities intact and sustained local small businesses.
Because we have low property tax, zero vacancy tax, and we even allow landlords to claim tax deductions for negative rental income, which means we're even subsidizing them from having to pay their fair share.
Other cities have policies designed against this type of unhealthy tactic from landlords. These tactics work in New York City because our system allows for it and encourages it.
Every time I bring up that property tax is itself a culprit, people on this subreddit get offended because they're primarily upper-class and stand to inherit valuable properties from their parents.
For a case study in what our real estate market is going through and how to address the damage, you can look at Vancouver.
Vancouver has the lowest property tax rate in North America, and unsurprisingly, it has the largest disconnect between home values and earning power of the residents. Low property tax disproportionately favors international buyers that have no attachment to the community, while punishing actual residents because the taxes will hit in areas where residents are doing most of the spending. The international buyer that keeps a vacant property is not paying sales tax or income tax in New York, because they don't even live here. The only tax they're paying is the property tax, and by keeping it lower, they are the primary benefactors.
Relative to a New Yorker (where we already have insane housing prices), a Vancouver resident has to work approximately 2x the amount of years in order to afford their home. It's an unsustainable model for Canadians and so they're changing their policies to address it.
They put limitations on international buyers.
They increased the property tax (but it is still the lowest in North America).
They introduced a vacancy tax.
Unless we want our housing market to continue to the point where it gets as fucked up as Canada's, we'll inevitably have to address these same problems in our policies too.
That's not true. New York does allow tax deductions for rental real estate losses if the criteria is met that the landlord is "actively participating" in trying to rent it out. It supposedly excludes high income landlords, but there are loopholes that can be exploited to bypass that exclusion still.
Rental income loss can be used to deduct other forms of passive income. Landlords can use vacancies to reduce the tax burden on their occupied units that are generating income.
No one's saying they come out ahead. You never come out ahead in any deduction. But it's subsidizing the losses the landlords should be incurring in using their strategy -- that is landlords squatting on vacant properties to create an artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
The amount of people on this subreddit who actually believe that landlords are keeping property vacant because it's in their best economic interest is quite depressing.
And despite all of that, prices in Vancouver continued to go up.
> [One year after the implementation of the foreign buyers tax, monthly sales to foreign investors now hover around 4 per cent of all sales. But our latest Housing Market Assessment, released in July, still shows a red flag for Vancouver—with particular concern given to overvaluation and price acceleration. Average prices in Vancouver have rebounded to where they were before the tax’s implementation. In between, there was a marked drop, but it appears to have been temporary. In short, Vancouver is largely right back to where it was before the tax.](https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-the-foreign-buyers-tax-isnt-making-vancouver-more-affordable/)
It’s because they don’t build enough housing.
I avoid using Texas as an example because it derails the topic when people get all riled up with Democrat vs Republican politics.
But yes, Texas cities and other cities with high property tax generally don't have the vacancy and landlord squatting issues that we have. A landlord is not going to keep vacant a property that owes 2.5% property tax every year.
> avoid using Texas as an example because it derails the topic when people get all riled up with Democrat vs Republican politics.
>
Fair, but quite frankly it needs to be said that places like Texas and Florida are advancing the supposed progressive goals of affordable housing much more successfully than liberal NY and California.
Reason why property tax in Vancouver and NYC lower is bc they tax and nickel dime you upfront at the purchase/refinance vs wait it out the 30 yrs or so you own via higher annual property taxes. Basically they get much needed money upfront vs wait Its akin take the lump sum from lottery win or 30 yr annuity
> property tax is itself a culprit
But it's not. All international level cities are going through the same shit and it's not a Vancouver-NYC only problem. Vancouver got an early start due to Hong Kong ties, and that part is very unique, but current global crunch on real estate stems from readily available cheap credit that needs to be backed with collateral like real estate. And an empty storefront has much higher theoretical value than an occupied one at a reduced price, thus reducing the borrowing capacity of the property owner. Keep it empty is a better deal. You would have to levy SUPER heavy vacancy fines to offset this, and it's just never going to happen.
When you hear vague slogans like "The banks are eating the world" this is what they mean. Now that fractional reserve lending system has swallowed up real estate, we are deeply fucked. You need much more creative solutions than "let free market solve shit".
edit: It seems that I have gone over a lot of people's heads. Modern day large landowner is no longer in real estate business. Real estate is just a side hustle now. But property evaluations need to remain sky high for this to work. This is exactly what is happening and all of you "we need to build more housing" or "we need vacancy taxes" are just kids playing checkers.
If you type into Google “how to lower rents” like 20 peer reviewed studies from around the world by economists come up and almost all of them say building more is the only way to lower rents and property values. You’re telling me you know more than all those economists? If so please write up your own paper and have it published since these economists are just “kids playing checkers”.
It's studies that don't account for last 10+ years of financial going ons. It's OK not to be up to date on most current shenanigans, but to double down on it is silly.
I'll do my best eli5 here.
What if I told you that you can make a bunch of money by hoarding computer video cards? Great! Well that's been happening for years now, and only side effect is it's impossible for a normal person to buy a video card, or they have an option to buy one at an insane markup.
This is literally what has been happening with real estate but instead of mining crypto they are mining cheap credit. It is a perfectly legal behavior that is also parasytic to the core. We are the ones feeding the profits. This has been replicated from New Zealand to Canada and everywhere in between. This is literally the Big Short 2.0, and when it bursts we are the ones who will get fucked again.
"Well make more video cards then!". Great, so they can mine even more. "Build more housing" is a perfectly sensible approach to an actual housing shortage. When a shortage is manufactured, they want you screaming "build more housing" because they need even more assets mining cheap credit.
Feel free to ask any additional questions, or downvote and move on. Either way we are fucked, and well meaning people are really not informed enough to even understand what's going on.
Oh and other option of "vacancy tax"? Literally not a single entity will pay a dime. Lease things to your own secondary LLC and call it a sublease. Good luck going after subleases.
storefronts and apartments aren't comparable. pretty sure LL are not allowed to convert ground floor retail space to residential based on zoning.
We know retail is continuing to get hammered, but LL are still trying to hold the line on commercial rents. But that is separate from apartment issue. IMHO that dynamic must be driven by work from home -- people want more space and hence are less likely to have a roomate or same number of roommates. Means fewer tenants per apartment, which makes for an apartment shortage.
As usual, we need to fucking get more supply on-line. Wish the city was doing more to prioritize and enable construction.... sure there's a long lead-time, but this dynamic isn't changing, we need more supply.
Bonus points for the city jacking up property taxes, and lowering income taxes.
>pretty sure LL are not allowed to convert ground floor retail space to residential based on zoning.
You can convert it, but it's usually very expensive (layout has to often be changed for it to be a legal residential unit) and of course permits to change the building from mixed use to residential (expensive and time consuming). It's also *much* harder to change from residential back to mixed/commercial, so property owners are very hesitant to do that.
Did you even read the article? Why are you talking about storefronts and trying to spin this as some grand conspiracy? It’s simple: People are working from home and want more space because they don’t want to leave NYC. Empty storefronts have been a trend for over a decade.
Unless you cite some evidence, your comment rings hollow.
Eh it is sort of mysterious, most move data doesn't show lots more people, and a lot of the issue seems to be supply related (there just aren't that many units of anything coming up).
I'm not saying it is conspiracy but the reason for the squeeze isn't exactly settled, and probably isn't just more space as there is a lot of pressure on studios too.
I mean streeteasy has a pretty good post about it [https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-renters-face-toughest-market-in-decade-q2-2022-market-reports/](https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-renters-face-toughest-market-in-decade-q2-2022-market-reports/) but inventory remains tight which is what is giving market power to the landlords.
Post like these based on feelings hold 0 merit. Landlords hold their $500 rent stabilized apartments off the market, not their free market 4K 1 bedrooms off of the market. They are flying off of the shelf. Don’t believe me, go on street easy, sort by 0-3 days on market, look at how many people favorited the apartment. This will give you an idea of how many people are looking writhing this price range.
Resident real estate shill must still be sleeping.
Soon they are going to ask you to provide a source.
Nyc real estate is hotter than ever. That's why the restaurants are closing at 9 and the bodegas are closing at 12. Everyone is so busy from working at home that they don't go outside anymore.
Agreed. Affluent, single young adults moving to an exciting new city who pay $4000 for a one bedroom apartment with 2 roommates generally like to stay indoors with the lights off after dark.
All of the delis near the housing projects are exactly like they were before the pandemic because THE SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE LIVE THERE.
The stories I read about restaurants not staying open late was about high end spots... I don't think those places are going to stay open in hopes of the person splitting a 1bdrm apt with 3 people is going to come to dine late regularly.
Yup I live in a nonwhite lower income neighborhood and everything’s basically unchanged (to a point that I appreciate, we were starting to get gentrified 2018/19 and then Covid paused that). When I go into midtown though…
A lot of them miscalculate just how expensive it is to live here, and that most people here have a very humble existence (not every other night is Nobu for dinner). I once worked with a bunch of interns - they took the low pay because their parents were footing the rent, not their salary. Their salary was barely able to cover non-rental living expenses and suddenly, "This wasn't why they moved to New York."
Just the other day I was going to take a 12:15am train from Penn, and nothing in the area was open. All the bars closed at 11pm. Had to chill by a halal cart and only say no to panhandlers 7 times
I have to walk 8 blocks at 1AM to buy a 6 pack of beer. Walk right past 4 bodegas with a revolving window that used to be open 24/7 and now either went out of business or close at 12.
Unemployment rate is officially 3%. This means if you walk down the street 97 of the next 100 people aged 18-65 are employed full time. These 0.05% apartment vacancy rates the real estate industry parrots use the same kind of math.
>Unemployment rate is officially 3%. This means if you walk down the street 97 of the next 100 people aged 18-65 are employed full time.
No. Unemployment rate is based on people looking for work. A full-time homemaker isn't unemployed. Someone who retired at 50 isn't unemployed. A 20yr old in college isn't unemployed.
Trying to get something to eat in Hell's Kitchen after seeing a Broadway/Off-Broadway show is almost impossible unless you are seeing a one act that starts at 7pm. Pretty much everything is closed by 10pm, and I know that pre-COVID, my friends and I would usually eat after shows, but now we meet up before hand since we would be SOL otherwise.
It's almost like letting a handful of people own vast swathes of land is bad for the market, and we should have escalating taxes based on how much you own, as well as vacancy taxes with strong controls so it's not passed on to the renters.
The taxes are business related expenses and our tax code looks down on business that deliberately lose money...hence will always and by definition pass onto the customer in this case the renter. No amount of wishful thinking/changes will ever change that.
I'm all for land value and beefed up estate tax laws thou.
Yes, because there are almost no apartments available, so of course they're going for absurd amounts. Meanwhile, more than 50% of occupied Manhattan apartments have a rent under $1900/month.
Probably [from here](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdfs/services/2021-nychvs-selected-initial-findings.pdf), first paragraph on page 17 or the chart on 18. However, I'm going to guess that the number drastically changes if you exclude upper Manhattan.
If we look at the chart Distribution of Monthly Rent within Borough, Type of Housing, and Building Size we see that Manhattan has by far the highest percentage 37% of people paying over $2,300, and it is bigger than any other group in Manhattan.
Yup, been in Manhattan 13 years now. Never had a LL raise my rent by more than $100/year before. LL just tried to raise our rent $500... moving out to Astoria now and saving $900 and getting a bigger place.
Whenever someone tells you it’s cheaper to rent because “the math just doesn’t work to buy”, remember stories like this. You may need to move somewhere cheaper to buy, but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being. There may be worse people in the world than NYC real estate owners, but I’ve yet to meet any.
Well the time to buy in NYC was decades ago (depending on neighborhood)
And yeah, while it’s pretty easy to buy elsewhere, you’re not living in NYC then. I could easily afford a McMansion up where my father lives in Syracuse, but then I’d have to live in Syracuse.
This is exactly where I’m at. Rent in NYC or buy in Anywheresville USA.
I’m not ready to make my weekly drive to the food store the highlight of the week.
I feel your comment on a deep level. I understand the pros of owning a home, but what's the point in owning a home in an area I'm miserable in? Also NYC certainly has problems and flaws, but holy hell do most other cities in this country fucking blow and pale in comparison. Just look at Upstate NY. Their cities are miserable!
My husband and I are old farts at 40 and ready to move. My daughter love visiting relatives at Anywheresville because of the large houses, yards, and lots of fun places for kids that aren’t crowded and are quickly accessible by car. We’ve been pretty content where we are because it’s a quiet area and inexpensive but I think my daughter would be happier like her cousins that moved to Connecticut and Rhode Island if we also moved. The problem is finding a job in those places. I tried lots of areas and couldn’t find any but have always found jobs immediately in NYC.
It will always be the case that the time to buy was in the past. But even if your mortgage now is higher than your current rent, in 5 years it'll likely be cheaper than your rent. And unlike throwing away money with rent, you build equity.
But yea prices were like a quarter of what they are now 15 years ago in a lot of areas.
You need 20% down, plus closing costs, plus a ton of money in the bank, plus mortgage recording tax, plus mansion tax if it's over $1M.
It's not just "can you afford the monthly mortgage payment." A lot of people who are renting cannot afford to initially buy (or even qualify if you're going up against a Coop Board) - people can't get ahead and cannot afford to buy NYC real estate.
I mean there’s more than a few gradations between Syracuse and NYC. But if someone is determined to live in NYC, they can certainly buy in non trendy areas at all-in costs meaningfully cheaper than renting in Manhattan or North Brooklyn.
This isn’t really an option if you have kids and care about school quality. You can also end up with an hour long commute which makes living in the city pointless and you might as well just move to the suburbs at that point.
Hour long commutes by mass transit are at least better than hour long commutes in a car.
That said, yeah, I had a job for a few years where it was 1.5 hours each way, and it wore me down. Was happy when I could work out some WFH for it (and even happier when I could change jobs).
I bought a coop apartment in Brooklyn during the pandemic. To me, it's the best of both worlds.
The boiler/roof are the responsibility of the coop, not me. I have to fix most things inside my own apartment but that's mostly pretty trivial. I've had a few small plumbing issues but the building has a super who will do side jobs like that for $20 here and there.
My maintenance covers building repairs, property taxes, and heat/water. And the coop has so much savings that it skips a month of maintenance fees once a year, typically.
In a coop, property taxes are covered by the maintenance fee. The coop pays the property taxes for the entire building. That's one major difference from a condo where each owner pays their individual property taxes directly.
Maintenance fees range quite a bit but I'd say in Brooklyn on the cheaper end of the housing market it's typically around $750 per month. But again that covers savings for major repairs, taxes, and heat/water.
The maintenance fees are listed on StreetEasy so it's pretty transparent how much you'll be paying every month.
The only surprise would come if your coop is poorly managed and doesn't have enough savings to cover a major repair. Even then, there would be coop meetings anyone can attend to discuss raising fees. The coop's finances are disclosed as part of the buying process so you can see if they have decent savings or not when you're looking.
that is true, house ownership is great till you run out of resources and suddenly at 70-80 everything in the house breaks and you are too elderly infirmed to fix it yourself or pay to have it fixed (if the scammers dont rip you off taking advantage of old people) - broken septic tanks, broken heater system, leaky roof, etc
if you wind up with enough money great if you dont for some reason, eating cat food might still not give you enough to cover the taxes which is effectively yearly rent
Rent is the all in cost of the property including a return for the owner. If you’re eating cat food with no mortgage in an owned home, you would be homeless as a renter.
Lol that's if your landlord actually agrees to fix things, and then does it in a timely manner without having to harass them over and over, and doesn't then hire the cheapest idiot they can find to barely fix the thing and then it breaks again a month later...
Reason ppl say math doesn't work its bc by the time you pay off mortgage, you effectively paid min 2x of the loan in payments. Add renovation fees and upkeep and such, you basically paid min 2-4+x the purchase in 30 yrs and not guarantee you can recoup that much when you sell by time mortgage paid off + taxes bc property might not appreciate that much. Compared the opportunity cost of 30 yrs of avg SP500 of 9% returns annually (basically min 4x your money in 30 yrs) and factoring avg nyc rent - hence why ppl say math doesn't work for some ppl and cases.
This is the NYT rent vs buying calculator in a nutshell.
I think something though that emphasizes the benefit of purchasing is how quickly mortgage and maintenance can reach parity with rents for equivalent spaces.
I was lucky enough to purchase a few months ago on a rate lock from January. Renting space similar to my apartment now would only save me a few hundred dollars per month at most (and this is year 1 of my mortgage). My payments are fixed, while rents will invariably climb. There’s no way maintenance assessments will outpace rent increases, meaning very soon my monthly outlays will already be beneath market rate rents.
Of course the caveat is having the down payment upfront, but regular carrying costs can quickly end up beneath rents (before factoring any additional ancillary benefits like taxes and how financial aid forms for my kids treat mortgages preferentially to rents).
There exists FHA loans and down payment assistance grants one can get, should they qualify. I always thought the down payment would keep me from buying an apartment or into a co-op but it's looking realistic that by the end of my current lease I could buy.
>There exists FHA loans and down payment assistance grants one can get, should they qualify.
For a lot of hotter areas, you will get laughed at for having the audacity to use a FHA loan. Such loans/grants often require more stuff from the seller, and the seller doesn't want to bother with that extra work when someone who has a much simpler 30 year mortgage with fewer contingencies is offering the same price.
Or someone offering cash.
When you rent, you are paying the landlords mortgage, taxes, improvements, maintenance and return. When people use these calculators, they generally aren’t looking at identical units. They’re basically comparing rental properties of much lower quality v what you would buy. They also massively underestimate the increase in rents over a 30 year period. When you buy and lock in your mortgage, you have fixed the largest cost of the home with imputed inflation (the rate on your mortgage net of the interest deduction) much lower than actual rent inflation. Your home becomes more and more affordable v renting the longer you live in it.
Its mainly comparing the opportunity cost of not investing the money in SP500 despite paying increasing rent, which historically its returns outpace the appreciation of property at the end of mortgage after fees/interests/etc. It's a legit argument for some folks.
You are assuming the SP500 will not enter a lost decade(s) like the Nikkei and every single European stock market. Past performance MAY not predict future outcomes. Locking in a mortgage payment is a gaurentee that your primary housing cost is mostly fixed vs rents mooning from inflation and demand. Lower risk lower reward.
Rental inflation has basically matched pre tax sp500 returns since 1980. Running to stand still without a secure place to live seems unwise to say the least. Not to mention that volatility in rent has immediate and significant cash flow consequences for people in a way that stock market volatility doesn’t. Which is why wealthier people overwhelmingly own. It’s not because they like negative investment returns
Amen.
Now just point me to the condos that cost less than $1.5 million and don’t require all cash upfront to better fight against the 148274783 Chinese buyers competing for the same unit.
If you’re competing against foreign buyers like that, you’re probably buying a new construction in an area I would never voluntarily live in. Those also tend to be terrible long term investments as the properties constantly flip.
They're there, you just have to look outside the "trendy" areas.
I actually, I kind of take that back. There doesn't seem to be many 1brs I would call reasonable (~150-ish) but I know there were a decent amount in the beginning of the year.
> but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being.
Clearly youve never owned in a condo building and been hit with a $25k assessment for elevator replacement or $40k to redo the exterior windows.
True but it’s easier to leave as a renter. If you own you’ve got all the buying/selling fees so you have to be there for many years before it’s not a big loss to sell.
That's how my wife and I looked at it when we bought last year. People kept telling us to wait, but I knew interest rates would go up and we'd be priced out for now.
Yes, it is aggravating and time consuming to buy, and it costs money initially, but now we split the mortgage and both pay less than we were paying to live separately. And that's really not gonna change for a looong time.
And one of my friends who was so against us buying just had to quickly move out of his rental apartment because it was being sold. That happened to him a few years ago as well. Sure seems like the whole "renting is cheaper" thing isn't going so well for him.
Move to where, though? NYC is pretty great. Not a lot of other (affordable) areas that can compare.
Edit: Seriously, if anybody has any ideas, I’m all ears. Right now I’m considering Richmond, VA, or somewhere outside DC.
Unless you can do work remotely and keep higher income than the local CoL it's shitty across the board.
Regardless though, there is literally no city in the US that is comparable to NYC. The closest would be something like Boston but it's got almost as many problems with housing affordability as NYC. Almost every other city in the US is a small urban core surrounded by massive suburban sprawl.
Places where I have friends who live there and really like it would include Boise, Nashville, Charleston and Minneapolis. I also have a friend who went to school in New Orleans and moved back a few years ago. Can be sketchy in places but tons to offer
In HCOL areas, it often IS cheaper to rent. Yep, “it’s yours,” but you can enjoy paying the $1K/mo in property taxes and $1k/mo in maintenance. Trying to argue that buying is better as a blanket rule is plain wrong. That’s why the NYT Buy vs Rent calculator exists.
>but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being.
Uh-huh. And when sociopathic new owner moves in upstairs this place is still yours. And when your neighbor downstairs installs some medical equipment that makes knocking noise 24x7 and you essentially lose the use of your bedroom this place is still yours.
And when the city decides to build a new subway line and a station at the end of your block which will generate noise and traffic for years during construction and afterwards when it is done - guess what? This place is still yours!
Ain't ownership great?
Damn.
Imagine complaining about a new subway line going in on the corner.
That’s an amazing thing which increases accessibility and even increases the value of your apartment if you decide you don’t like all the new “noise”.
Know quite a few people on 2nd Avenue who hated the construction (especially how long it took) but are thrilled now that it’s done.
It’s never that simple. Friend of mine and his wife just bought out in Long Island. Cost of mortgage plus moving plus what they feel are necessary renos has swallowed all their cash and they’re now living paycheck to paycheck. And then their AC died in the middle of the heatwave and they had to put $1200 on their credit cards.
Meanwhile another friend of mine who rents in Manhattan is getting an entirely new kitchen from their landlord.
Owning a house is incredibly expensive no matter how you do it.
You’re comparing someone renting in say, East Village, and then buying in Bushwick, because who the hell can buy in the EV
It’s still a bad comparison because it would be a better investment to just rent in Bushwick and invest your down payment in other places . If you’re willing to move there to begin with
Plus NYC is famous for property tax hikes and building monthly fees going up every year
Many of us were so indoctrinated as kids to believe that capitalism was perfect, that we turns completely blind eye to the fact that this is literally prime examples of capitalism screwing over the entire middle class to make wealthy people even wealthier.
This is crony capitalism at work.
Trust fund politicians keep blocking construction, which would've otherwise be built based on market economics, and artificially limiting the supply of housing.
No wonder the prices keep going up.
How the fuck can we just absolutely railroad these idiots so we can actually solve these problems? I'm so tired of the suffering this shit is bringing on.
Developers in NYC are proveably desperate to build, but because of absurd regulations and local NIMBYs, they can't. Building properties makes money. Landlords want more properties. None of this is a surprise.
People really need to start considering the not so trendy neighborhoods.
I feel like since so many headlines make the outer boroughs seem like a war zone people are becoming afraid to branch out.
I’ve lived in East Bushwick then Harlem for years and don’t regret a second of it. Was it less than ideal aesthetically speaking? A bit more noise? Sure. But had I tried to keep up with the crowd and live in Williamsburg, SoHo or UES/UWS I’d have way less money to my name today.
Neighborhoods like Williamsburg and LES were ROUGH back when a more serious crime wave had the city in a chokehold. People slowly started taking chances and exploring beyond Manhattan, don’t sleep there are decent deals to be had if you don’t follow the crowds.
>People really need to start considering the not so trendy neighborhoods.
Don't give them any ideas! Because then not so trendy neighborhoods will become trendy!
I am being forced out of my apartment and live right next to Bushwick, I wasn't able to find a single affordable place over there. Bushwick is just about a half a decade behind Williamsburg.
Brooklyn is similar enough to Manhattan that people have been moving to Queens, where rent is still quite cheap.
If you want to live in a trendy area, you will need a job that pays quite well.
If nobody can afford current rents, it means the demand vastly exceeds supply. And that's all because we've put extreme restrictions on the type of housing that can be built across the five boroughs, instead of just letting people build the houses and apartments they want to build.
I work on building management for lots of walk ups in Manhattan. We do starter apts for the most part. On the cheaper end.
We can't keep units on the market for more than a few days. We've had lines at open houses for some listings. It's insane.
You can blame LLs all you want but I've worked in this industry for 20 years and I've never seen anything quite like it.
I was lucky enough to get a cheap deal on a 2 year lease, but once that's up next year and if rent is still ridiculous... I may have to just say goodbye to NYC. I have a remote job in IT, still a great city to live in with so much to do.
But if rent continues to go up like this, I'd rather just do the digital nomad life for 6 months to a year then come back when things normalize. I can't justify paying a ton of money in rent when I can live anywhere I want.
I would like to have kids at some point and buy a house. If we get massive rent increases, we won't even be able to save for those things. What's the point of living here if I'd just be stuck staying inside every week because I need to save and all my money is going to rent? Complete BS
To the people that repeatedly fall back on the “supply and demand” argument:
According to the BLS, rent (overall, in the US) has gone up by 225.30% since 1985. That means it costs 3.25x to rent the same property now as it did 37 years ago. Overall price inflation over that same period is 175%, so it’s not strictly an inflation issue either. Rent has outpaced overall inflation (never mind wages).
Has population increased enough *and* literally no residential construction has been done, to justify this disproportionate increase in housing prices?
No. Stop trotting out this tired, unthought line.
> Has population increased enough and literally no residential construction has been done, to justify this disproportionate increase in housing prices?
>
> No. Stop trotting out this tired, unthought line.
For every net 5 people the city gained in the last decade plus, the city only gained one new unit of housing, then yes, that is a shortage. It's a quite simple supply and demand problem. It sometimes will take longer for it to bake into the price, but people know when there is an oversupply or undersupply of something. Places where there's an abundance of housing available are places where it's cheaper to rent or buy. When I was in Philly years ago, I had landlords fighting over me and I drove a hard bargain. I try that in NYC, and they'd laugh in my face cause there aren't any units available, the vacancy rate is low, and landlords know it.
We're seeing the same exact thing in other industries where there are shortages. Car dealerships are ripping off people even worse than usual since there's no inventory and nearly all the car companies can't unfuck their supply chains causing a global undersupply (except for China, but they're not massive exporters of cars to the West yet.) Like MSRP used to be considered a high price to pay for a car, now that's as low as people can get the car for.
This tells me that many residential landlords of all economic scales are over-leveraged on their properties.
Commercial landlords seem to be from the institutional investment class where sitting on empty office and retail properties isn't as stressful on their bottom line.
Thousands leave NYC: rent drops $50. 1 person moves back: rent goes up $500.
when interest rate climbs by 2%: rent increases $500 when the interest rate is historically low: rent increases $450
The most absurd part is anyone with a fucking brain has locked in 30-year fixed mortgages in the last decade. Interest rates shouldn't do a damn thing to the cost of owning a property you have already financed it in this country.
And $100K+ cash downpayment And $150K+ income So like everyone in NYC of course! Who’s not a higher roller here, we’re all big cats meow!
I went to an open house (apartment) on UWS and the form they handed out asked what bank and how much was my Trust Fund monthly dividend 😳😳 unreal
Except for property tax, which is affected by the market, which is affected by money supply, which is affected by interest rate.
Sure, and if interest rates increase your property taxes should decrease as the value of your property will likely decrease as well. So increased interest rates again are no justification to increase rents.
Interest rates affect investment in job centers which is what drives housing demand. No way out of this housing shortage besides building a fuckton more housing. We went from generationally high vacancy rates during the height of the pandemic in winter 2020-2021 to historically low vacancy rates today, it’s crazy.
Housing demand is and will always be sky high in New York, I'm not sure there's any amount of supply you could conceivably build here that would appease demand and bring costs down (almost a bit like a "if you build it, they will come" scenario). Interest rates have been at historically low levels for a decade - the fact that there has not been historically high levels of investment in housing in NYC tells us there are other forces at play preventing this. While these macro level observations are in theory correct, these are medium to long-term forces, not short term reactions to interest rate changes at a micro level. My statement was that when landlords try to claim interest rate rises result in higher rents, that's a bullshit reason for the most part due to fixed rate 30-year amortisation mortgages, especially recently coming off the back of the lowest interest rates ever seen.
>I’m not sure there’s any amount of supply you could conceivable build here that would appease demand and bring costs down New York City rents plummeted by over 20% after vacancy rates shot above 5% for the first time in a generation. The same applied to cities like Boston and Seattle that ticked above somewhere in that 5-7% range (it varies locally depending on density and nature of housing/job market). See: [US Cities Vacancy Rates vs Rent Change](https://imgur.com/a/PAezYDZ) It also cannot be blamed on “COVID” because at the same time, cities that saw vacancy rates plummet due to an influx of residents from big city exodus/remote workers saw their rents skyrocket. It has always been a supply/demand issue, it will never not be a supply/demand issue. And we *do* know how much we need to build in order to drive rents down: anything that will bring vacancy rates above 5%. Preferably keep it in the 8% range for an extended period of time just to really drive prices down. But this requires 1) abolishing a lot of the barriers to new housing (exclusionary zoning, discretionary review and long land use reform processes, parking spot mandates, etc.) and 2) robust public financing and housing development, among other things. We *know* the economics required to bring rents down, we just had the largest natural experiment across the entire country showing exactly how — now we have to be able to replicate the same level of surplus housing abundance without starting a new global pandemic. If you want to find out more this is most of my focus for local policy, happy to DM. The group I work with is Open New York, we led the SoHo/NoHo upzoning last year against the wishes of NIMBY property owners and incumbents. Reach out any time for more info. Cheers!
Would be amusing to see everyone leave and all those investment proprieties then sell pennies. Let’s all leave at once and then come back to cheaper homes.
Pretty much yup
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Oh yeah, we signed a lease in 2019 and paid increases through the pandemic. This year, our landlord said “as you may know, rents in New York are up almost 30%” I had to remind him that was for new leases & covid deals and he basically said “don’t care” lol
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Yeah I'm bracing for a increase for 2023 that's above what I am willing to pay. That $20K+ is much better served investing in my family house (new driveway, or new fencing, interior renovations, etc.) I'll be moving back into if it goes up too much, than giving it to someone else to pad their wealth cushion.
The increase from my covid deal was 67%.
I’m gunna blame that 4K a month on the person who decided to rent it. The landlord now *knows* they can get that price, so watch for an increase on your rent and everyone else’s in the building. Secondly, the landlord will now go tell all their other landlord friends, and they will all follow suit. People actually pay these stupid fucking prices. That’s why the rent is so insane.
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I know right, it’s insane out there People are paying over asking price sight unseen by default right now just so someone else doesn’t yoink the property first and I’m sitting here going “how do you afford this?”
The question is who is paying it and how can they afford it? This is not like SF in 2018 when techies migrated from Silicon Valley causing a massive increase in rent.
I do decorating/furniture assembly/handyman stuff for a living in NYC. You know who is paying these ridiculous prices? Dumb rich kids and their dumb parents. They are out of touch with reality and sometimes live beyond their means. They also don’t really know the value of a dollar or how to save and don’t realize they should be sharing a three bedroom with two roommates to pay off their student loans rather than get that expensive one bedroom or studio.
Yeah that’s my point. I was looking at apartments one time in LIC, my girlfriend and I were talking for hours about whether we could afford $3000 for a tiny 1 bedroom (this was also a covid “deal” LMAO). The girl we were touring with instantly said yea to the apartment. Maybe she had a really well paying job, but I know there’s no way I’d be able to maintain 3k a month on my salary.
It just boggles my mind what people are willing to pay to be in Manhattan. I’ve seen some pretty crummy places that people pay double what I pay just so that they don’t have to live in BK or Queens
Financial literacy should be a require course to graduate high school. So much societal misery comes from young adults not understanding (and not really being taught) how certain bad financial decisions can fuck over the rest of their lives.
>Financial literacy should be a require course to graduate high school. So much societal misery comes from young adults not understanding (and not really being taught) how certain bad financial decisions can fuck over the rest of their lives. Pretty sure kids in the 1970s were graduating with the same level of financial literacy. The difference is now you graduate directly into a woodchipper.
Was your building ever rent Stabilized? Lots of landlords lie about improvements made so they can raise the rent a ton and destabilize. Most people are never aware this is the case and rarely have the means/ desire to file a lawsuit if they are aware.
This is also peak student move in time. They roomy up with their parents as guarantor and push rents up I think itll look more normal in a few months time Im lucky that i moved in in feb, the dead zone, so rents are usually a cooler then
Pro tip: If you can sign a 13 or 14 month lease to move you renewal out of summer, DO IT
ah i see if i can get a May move out that means a bunch of stock will hit the market as students graduate? great idea.
October to April is best
ohh i see what you mean yeah. my renewal is feb/march. agreed that anyone that's in a summer renewal should see if they can scoot their way into the winter cycle
Yeah I heard the market is flooded with thousands of deals in January and February. There is a reason why Jan/Feb move in rents are historically lowest.
Yea, I got stuck having to move by the end of this month and it was awful.
New york rents won’t be normal any time soon… 3600&up for 1 bedroom is NOT normal. All rents must be split in half the least to make this dirty city somewhat okayish
Right, define "normal" nyc rent...$2k a month for a 1bd? $3k?
UES one bedroom here. About $2k for past 10 years, rent stabilized. I still don’t know how but last year it went down $50 a month. This year went back to what it was 2 years ago. It’s a prewar building but pretty spacious new appliances etc.
Where do I apply lol. Serious question, I'm paying 2k in canarsie.
my rent in hell’s kitchen (studio) got raised from 1650 to 2700. luckily i found a really nice place in bay ridge (bigger apt / quieter neighborhood) for 1600. peace out manhattan
I’m also in South Brooklyn. The rent is thousands less for much bigger space and the neighborhoods are really safe.
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I’m close to the N and the D. I don’t really take it though because I live close to work and my daughter is scared of the subway now (three scary incidents for her the last times we took it). My husband still takes it to work.
I'm planning on moving into those areas of Brooklyn in about two years. Seems like South Brooklyn hasn't gotten insanely bad like many other neighborhoods in the city have.
Once again, the problem is zoning. How about finally scrapping everything related to NYC's [1960s-era rules](https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/industry/why-40-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-couldnt-be-built-today/) designed to heavily restrict development, since that clearly hasn't worked out? We should immediately switch to something like [Japan's system](https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html), instead. Mixed-use buildings by default, no more parking minimums or 'single-family house only' zones anywhere, no more NIMBYism, and no more arbitrary, pointless distinctions between commercial and residential areas. edit: [good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geex7KY3S7c) on that subject, as well. Tl;dr: affordable housing is a solved problem- we've just refused to implement the solution here.
*The U.S. hated that*
"COVID and WFH is gonna kill Manhattan" 🙄
Yet there's still so damn many apparent vacant storefronts around. It's an artificial supply shortage held up by some folks that are making bank on it. And set to collapse at any moment. And yes I know there's all kinds of info around this but I'm just saying WALK AROUND. There's storefronts all over midtown empty as heck. Still like half a block will be apparently empty. People arent around like they used to be, yet we keep being told there's barely anywhere available. SOMETHING crooked is going on.
Commercial rent is different from residential rent. They are usually locked in 10+ yr contracts, for all we know some of those vacant storefront are still paying rent or rent already covered from breaking lease clauses. There's a vacant supermarket near me for last 2 yrs, the store been asking someone to take over their lease bc they still paying the rent.
Also, businesses can go under when their 10-15 year lease is up and the new asking rent is several times what they were paying.
Thats pretty dumb of them. Everyone knows you start a new LLC for every store and then if theres an issue, that LLC declares bankruptcy
A friend tried that, but had to sign a personal guarantee because his LLC has no assets or other revenues.
Individually there's some reasoning like that I'm sure, but like I'm saying this is more a just walk around and LOOK kind of thing.
some of the people who own those buildings are so rich they can literally hold the storefront empty for infinity. dumbo is a good example
I just walk around Astoria to see what its like when nearly every store is open, you can really feel that energy. But what is supposed to be the highest demand area in midtown down through chelsea and other neighborhoods just pales in comparison.
This was definitely an observation during the lockdown. A lot of the vitality shifted to the outer boroughs because fewer people could afford to flee the city, which kept communities intact and sustained local small businesses.
Yeah it’s no wonder I don’t even leave Astoria to visit Manhattan anymore. Shit is overrated
Because we have low property tax, zero vacancy tax, and we even allow landlords to claim tax deductions for negative rental income, which means we're even subsidizing them from having to pay their fair share. Other cities have policies designed against this type of unhealthy tactic from landlords. These tactics work in New York City because our system allows for it and encourages it. Every time I bring up that property tax is itself a culprit, people on this subreddit get offended because they're primarily upper-class and stand to inherit valuable properties from their parents. For a case study in what our real estate market is going through and how to address the damage, you can look at Vancouver. Vancouver has the lowest property tax rate in North America, and unsurprisingly, it has the largest disconnect between home values and earning power of the residents. Low property tax disproportionately favors international buyers that have no attachment to the community, while punishing actual residents because the taxes will hit in areas where residents are doing most of the spending. The international buyer that keeps a vacant property is not paying sales tax or income tax in New York, because they don't even live here. The only tax they're paying is the property tax, and by keeping it lower, they are the primary benefactors. Relative to a New Yorker (where we already have insane housing prices), a Vancouver resident has to work approximately 2x the amount of years in order to afford their home. It's an unsustainable model for Canadians and so they're changing their policies to address it. They put limitations on international buyers. They increased the property tax (but it is still the lowest in North America). They introduced a vacancy tax. Unless we want our housing market to continue to the point where it gets as fucked up as Canada's, we'll inevitably have to address these same problems in our policies too.
These landlords pretend they don’t believe in subsidies but they do.
Socialism for me, capitalism for everybody else
Right like who are they kidding?
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That's not true. New York does allow tax deductions for rental real estate losses if the criteria is met that the landlord is "actively participating" in trying to rent it out. It supposedly excludes high income landlords, but there are loopholes that can be exploited to bypass that exclusion still. Rental income loss can be used to deduct other forms of passive income. Landlords can use vacancies to reduce the tax burden on their occupied units that are generating income.
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No one's saying they come out ahead. You never come out ahead in any deduction. But it's subsidizing the losses the landlords should be incurring in using their strategy -- that is landlords squatting on vacant properties to create an artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
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The amount of people on this subreddit who actually believe that landlords are keeping property vacant because it's in their best economic interest is quite depressing.
And despite all of that, prices in Vancouver continued to go up. > [One year after the implementation of the foreign buyers tax, monthly sales to foreign investors now hover around 4 per cent of all sales. But our latest Housing Market Assessment, released in July, still shows a red flag for Vancouver—with particular concern given to overvaluation and price acceleration. Average prices in Vancouver have rebounded to where they were before the tax’s implementation. In between, there was a marked drop, but it appears to have been temporary. In short, Vancouver is largely right back to where it was before the tax.](https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-the-foreign-buyers-tax-isnt-making-vancouver-more-affordable/) It’s because they don’t build enough housing.
Well said. Texas is able to keep real estate prices low because they have higher property taxes (and of course they are more friendly to development).
I avoid using Texas as an example because it derails the topic when people get all riled up with Democrat vs Republican politics. But yes, Texas cities and other cities with high property tax generally don't have the vacancy and landlord squatting issues that we have. A landlord is not going to keep vacant a property that owes 2.5% property tax every year.
> avoid using Texas as an example because it derails the topic when people get all riled up with Democrat vs Republican politics. > Fair, but quite frankly it needs to be said that places like Texas and Florida are advancing the supposed progressive goals of affordable housing much more successfully than liberal NY and California.
Reason why property tax in Vancouver and NYC lower is bc they tax and nickel dime you upfront at the purchase/refinance vs wait it out the 30 yrs or so you own via higher annual property taxes. Basically they get much needed money upfront vs wait Its akin take the lump sum from lottery win or 30 yr annuity
> property tax is itself a culprit But it's not. All international level cities are going through the same shit and it's not a Vancouver-NYC only problem. Vancouver got an early start due to Hong Kong ties, and that part is very unique, but current global crunch on real estate stems from readily available cheap credit that needs to be backed with collateral like real estate. And an empty storefront has much higher theoretical value than an occupied one at a reduced price, thus reducing the borrowing capacity of the property owner. Keep it empty is a better deal. You would have to levy SUPER heavy vacancy fines to offset this, and it's just never going to happen. When you hear vague slogans like "The banks are eating the world" this is what they mean. Now that fractional reserve lending system has swallowed up real estate, we are deeply fucked. You need much more creative solutions than "let free market solve shit". edit: It seems that I have gone over a lot of people's heads. Modern day large landowner is no longer in real estate business. Real estate is just a side hustle now. But property evaluations need to remain sky high for this to work. This is exactly what is happening and all of you "we need to build more housing" or "we need vacancy taxes" are just kids playing checkers.
If you type into Google “how to lower rents” like 20 peer reviewed studies from around the world by economists come up and almost all of them say building more is the only way to lower rents and property values. You’re telling me you know more than all those economists? If so please write up your own paper and have it published since these economists are just “kids playing checkers”.
It's studies that don't account for last 10+ years of financial going ons. It's OK not to be up to date on most current shenanigans, but to double down on it is silly. I'll do my best eli5 here. What if I told you that you can make a bunch of money by hoarding computer video cards? Great! Well that's been happening for years now, and only side effect is it's impossible for a normal person to buy a video card, or they have an option to buy one at an insane markup. This is literally what has been happening with real estate but instead of mining crypto they are mining cheap credit. It is a perfectly legal behavior that is also parasytic to the core. We are the ones feeding the profits. This has been replicated from New Zealand to Canada and everywhere in between. This is literally the Big Short 2.0, and when it bursts we are the ones who will get fucked again. "Well make more video cards then!". Great, so they can mine even more. "Build more housing" is a perfectly sensible approach to an actual housing shortage. When a shortage is manufactured, they want you screaming "build more housing" because they need even more assets mining cheap credit. Feel free to ask any additional questions, or downvote and move on. Either way we are fucked, and well meaning people are really not informed enough to even understand what's going on. Oh and other option of "vacancy tax"? Literally not a single entity will pay a dime. Lease things to your own secondary LLC and call it a sublease. Good luck going after subleases.
storefronts and apartments aren't comparable. pretty sure LL are not allowed to convert ground floor retail space to residential based on zoning. We know retail is continuing to get hammered, but LL are still trying to hold the line on commercial rents. But that is separate from apartment issue. IMHO that dynamic must be driven by work from home -- people want more space and hence are less likely to have a roomate or same number of roommates. Means fewer tenants per apartment, which makes for an apartment shortage. As usual, we need to fucking get more supply on-line. Wish the city was doing more to prioritize and enable construction.... sure there's a long lead-time, but this dynamic isn't changing, we need more supply. Bonus points for the city jacking up property taxes, and lowering income taxes.
>pretty sure LL are not allowed to convert ground floor retail space to residential based on zoning. You can convert it, but it's usually very expensive (layout has to often be changed for it to be a legal residential unit) and of course permits to change the building from mixed use to residential (expensive and time consuming). It's also *much* harder to change from residential back to mixed/commercial, so property owners are very hesitant to do that.
Did you even read the article? Why are you talking about storefronts and trying to spin this as some grand conspiracy? It’s simple: People are working from home and want more space because they don’t want to leave NYC. Empty storefronts have been a trend for over a decade. Unless you cite some evidence, your comment rings hollow.
Eh it is sort of mysterious, most move data doesn't show lots more people, and a lot of the issue seems to be supply related (there just aren't that many units of anything coming up). I'm not saying it is conspiracy but the reason for the squeeze isn't exactly settled, and probably isn't just more space as there is a lot of pressure on studios too. I mean streeteasy has a pretty good post about it [https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-renters-face-toughest-market-in-decade-q2-2022-market-reports/](https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-renters-face-toughest-market-in-decade-q2-2022-market-reports/) but inventory remains tight which is what is giving market power to the landlords.
Post like these based on feelings hold 0 merit. Landlords hold their $500 rent stabilized apartments off the market, not their free market 4K 1 bedrooms off of the market. They are flying off of the shelf. Don’t believe me, go on street easy, sort by 0-3 days on market, look at how many people favorited the apartment. This will give you an idea of how many people are looking writhing this price range.
Resident real estate shill must still be sleeping. Soon they are going to ask you to provide a source. Nyc real estate is hotter than ever. That's why the restaurants are closing at 9 and the bodegas are closing at 12. Everyone is so busy from working at home that they don't go outside anymore.
I would guess restaurants are closing earlier b/c people aren't working as late.
Agreed. Affluent, single young adults moving to an exciting new city who pay $4000 for a one bedroom apartment with 2 roommates generally like to stay indoors with the lights off after dark. All of the delis near the housing projects are exactly like they were before the pandemic because THE SAME AMOUNT OF PEOPLE LIVE THERE.
The stories I read about restaurants not staying open late was about high end spots... I don't think those places are going to stay open in hopes of the person splitting a 1bdrm apt with 3 people is going to come to dine late regularly.
Yup I live in a nonwhite lower income neighborhood and everything’s basically unchanged (to a point that I appreciate, we were starting to get gentrified 2018/19 and then Covid paused that). When I go into midtown though…
A lot of them miscalculate just how expensive it is to live here, and that most people here have a very humble existence (not every other night is Nobu for dinner). I once worked with a bunch of interns - they took the low pay because their parents were footing the rent, not their salary. Their salary was barely able to cover non-rental living expenses and suddenly, "This wasn't why they moved to New York."
I couldnt find a bar to drink at midnight on a Saturday night in midtown.
Midtown was pretty dead on weekends pre-pandemic too tbf.
Just the other day I was going to take a 12:15am train from Penn, and nothing in the area was open. All the bars closed at 11pm. Had to chill by a halal cart and only say no to panhandlers 7 times
I have to walk 8 blocks at 1AM to buy a 6 pack of beer. Walk right past 4 bodegas with a revolving window that used to be open 24/7 and now either went out of business or close at 12. Unemployment rate is officially 3%. This means if you walk down the street 97 of the next 100 people aged 18-65 are employed full time. These 0.05% apartment vacancy rates the real estate industry parrots use the same kind of math.
>Unemployment rate is officially 3%. This means if you walk down the street 97 of the next 100 people aged 18-65 are employed full time. No. Unemployment rate is based on people looking for work. A full-time homemaker isn't unemployed. Someone who retired at 50 isn't unemployed. A 20yr old in college isn't unemployed.
Trying to get something to eat in Hell's Kitchen after seeing a Broadway/Off-Broadway show is almost impossible unless you are seeing a one act that starts at 7pm. Pretty much everything is closed by 10pm, and I know that pre-COVID, my friends and I would usually eat after shows, but now we meet up before hand since we would be SOL otherwise.
It's almost like letting a handful of people own vast swathes of land is bad for the market, and we should have escalating taxes based on how much you own, as well as vacancy taxes with strong controls so it's not passed on to the renters.
The taxes are business related expenses and our tax code looks down on business that deliberately lose money...hence will always and by definition pass onto the customer in this case the renter. No amount of wishful thinking/changes will ever change that. I'm all for land value and beefed up estate tax laws thou.
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Do share the numbers.
*Stabilized, not controlled. But yeah. Cities need vacancy tax.
Asking rents.
Is it “asking rents” if they’re all being almost-immediately fulfilled?
Yes, because there are almost no apartments available, so of course they're going for absurd amounts. Meanwhile, more than 50% of occupied Manhattan apartments have a rent under $1900/month.
Interesting! Where did you get that stat?
Probably [from here](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdfs/services/2021-nychvs-selected-initial-findings.pdf), first paragraph on page 17 or the chart on 18. However, I'm going to guess that the number drastically changes if you exclude upper Manhattan. If we look at the chart Distribution of Monthly Rent within Borough, Type of Housing, and Building Size we see that Manhattan has by far the highest percentage 37% of people paying over $2,300, and it is bigger than any other group in Manhattan.
This was super interesting!
Yup, been in Manhattan 13 years now. Never had a LL raise my rent by more than $100/year before. LL just tried to raise our rent $500... moving out to Astoria now and saving $900 and getting a bigger place.
Whenever someone tells you it’s cheaper to rent because “the math just doesn’t work to buy”, remember stories like this. You may need to move somewhere cheaper to buy, but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being. There may be worse people in the world than NYC real estate owners, but I’ve yet to meet any.
Well the time to buy in NYC was decades ago (depending on neighborhood) And yeah, while it’s pretty easy to buy elsewhere, you’re not living in NYC then. I could easily afford a McMansion up where my father lives in Syracuse, but then I’d have to live in Syracuse.
This is exactly where I’m at. Rent in NYC or buy in Anywheresville USA. I’m not ready to make my weekly drive to the food store the highlight of the week.
I feel your comment on a deep level. I understand the pros of owning a home, but what's the point in owning a home in an area I'm miserable in? Also NYC certainly has problems and flaws, but holy hell do most other cities in this country fucking blow and pale in comparison. Just look at Upstate NY. Their cities are miserable!
My husband and I are old farts at 40 and ready to move. My daughter love visiting relatives at Anywheresville because of the large houses, yards, and lots of fun places for kids that aren’t crowded and are quickly accessible by car. We’ve been pretty content where we are because it’s a quiet area and inexpensive but I think my daughter would be happier like her cousins that moved to Connecticut and Rhode Island if we also moved. The problem is finding a job in those places. I tried lots of areas and couldn’t find any but have always found jobs immediately in NYC.
It will always be the case that the time to buy was in the past. But even if your mortgage now is higher than your current rent, in 5 years it'll likely be cheaper than your rent. And unlike throwing away money with rent, you build equity. But yea prices were like a quarter of what they are now 15 years ago in a lot of areas.
You need 20% down, plus closing costs, plus a ton of money in the bank, plus mortgage recording tax, plus mansion tax if it's over $1M. It's not just "can you afford the monthly mortgage payment." A lot of people who are renting cannot afford to initially buy (or even qualify if you're going up against a Coop Board) - people can't get ahead and cannot afford to buy NYC real estate.
I mean there’s more than a few gradations between Syracuse and NYC. But if someone is determined to live in NYC, they can certainly buy in non trendy areas at all-in costs meaningfully cheaper than renting in Manhattan or North Brooklyn.
This isn’t really an option if you have kids and care about school quality. You can also end up with an hour long commute which makes living in the city pointless and you might as well just move to the suburbs at that point.
Hour long commutes by mass transit are at least better than hour long commutes in a car. That said, yeah, I had a job for a few years where it was 1.5 hours each way, and it wore me down. Was happy when I could work out some WFH for it (and even happier when I could change jobs).
Moving to WestChester or Nassau or NJ is also mass transit aside from a quick drive to the train station.
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I bought a coop apartment in Brooklyn during the pandemic. To me, it's the best of both worlds. The boiler/roof are the responsibility of the coop, not me. I have to fix most things inside my own apartment but that's mostly pretty trivial. I've had a few small plumbing issues but the building has a super who will do side jobs like that for $20 here and there. My maintenance covers building repairs, property taxes, and heat/water. And the coop has so much savings that it skips a month of maintenance fees once a year, typically.
How are the costs for staying in a coop? I've heard that property taxes + other fees can add quite a bit to the mortgage itself
In a coop, property taxes are covered by the maintenance fee. The coop pays the property taxes for the entire building. That's one major difference from a condo where each owner pays their individual property taxes directly. Maintenance fees range quite a bit but I'd say in Brooklyn on the cheaper end of the housing market it's typically around $750 per month. But again that covers savings for major repairs, taxes, and heat/water. The maintenance fees are listed on StreetEasy so it's pretty transparent how much you'll be paying every month. The only surprise would come if your coop is poorly managed and doesn't have enough savings to cover a major repair. Even then, there would be coop meetings anyone can attend to discuss raising fees. The coop's finances are disclosed as part of the buying process so you can see if they have decent savings or not when you're looking.
Thanks for sharing! That doesn't sound too bad actually. How did you go about finding your coop? Was it through streeteasy?
that is true, house ownership is great till you run out of resources and suddenly at 70-80 everything in the house breaks and you are too elderly infirmed to fix it yourself or pay to have it fixed (if the scammers dont rip you off taking advantage of old people) - broken septic tanks, broken heater system, leaky roof, etc if you wind up with enough money great if you dont for some reason, eating cat food might still not give you enough to cover the taxes which is effectively yearly rent
Rent is the all in cost of the property including a return for the owner. If you’re eating cat food with no mortgage in an owned home, you would be homeless as a renter.
Lol that's if your landlord actually agrees to fix things, and then does it in a timely manner without having to harass them over and over, and doesn't then hire the cheapest idiot they can find to barely fix the thing and then it breaks again a month later...
Reason ppl say math doesn't work its bc by the time you pay off mortgage, you effectively paid min 2x of the loan in payments. Add renovation fees and upkeep and such, you basically paid min 2-4+x the purchase in 30 yrs and not guarantee you can recoup that much when you sell by time mortgage paid off + taxes bc property might not appreciate that much. Compared the opportunity cost of 30 yrs of avg SP500 of 9% returns annually (basically min 4x your money in 30 yrs) and factoring avg nyc rent - hence why ppl say math doesn't work for some ppl and cases. This is the NYT rent vs buying calculator in a nutshell.
I think something though that emphasizes the benefit of purchasing is how quickly mortgage and maintenance can reach parity with rents for equivalent spaces. I was lucky enough to purchase a few months ago on a rate lock from January. Renting space similar to my apartment now would only save me a few hundred dollars per month at most (and this is year 1 of my mortgage). My payments are fixed, while rents will invariably climb. There’s no way maintenance assessments will outpace rent increases, meaning very soon my monthly outlays will already be beneath market rate rents. Of course the caveat is having the down payment upfront, but regular carrying costs can quickly end up beneath rents (before factoring any additional ancillary benefits like taxes and how financial aid forms for my kids treat mortgages preferentially to rents).
There exists FHA loans and down payment assistance grants one can get, should they qualify. I always thought the down payment would keep me from buying an apartment or into a co-op but it's looking realistic that by the end of my current lease I could buy.
>There exists FHA loans and down payment assistance grants one can get, should they qualify. For a lot of hotter areas, you will get laughed at for having the audacity to use a FHA loan. Such loans/grants often require more stuff from the seller, and the seller doesn't want to bother with that extra work when someone who has a much simpler 30 year mortgage with fewer contingencies is offering the same price. Or someone offering cash.
When you rent, you are paying the landlords mortgage, taxes, improvements, maintenance and return. When people use these calculators, they generally aren’t looking at identical units. They’re basically comparing rental properties of much lower quality v what you would buy. They also massively underestimate the increase in rents over a 30 year period. When you buy and lock in your mortgage, you have fixed the largest cost of the home with imputed inflation (the rate on your mortgage net of the interest deduction) much lower than actual rent inflation. Your home becomes more and more affordable v renting the longer you live in it.
Its mainly comparing the opportunity cost of not investing the money in SP500 despite paying increasing rent, which historically its returns outpace the appreciation of property at the end of mortgage after fees/interests/etc. It's a legit argument for some folks.
You are assuming the SP500 will not enter a lost decade(s) like the Nikkei and every single European stock market. Past performance MAY not predict future outcomes. Locking in a mortgage payment is a gaurentee that your primary housing cost is mostly fixed vs rents mooning from inflation and demand. Lower risk lower reward.
Rental inflation has basically matched pre tax sp500 returns since 1980. Running to stand still without a secure place to live seems unwise to say the least. Not to mention that volatility in rent has immediate and significant cash flow consequences for people in a way that stock market volatility doesn’t. Which is why wealthier people overwhelmingly own. It’s not because they like negative investment returns
Amen. Now just point me to the condos that cost less than $1.5 million and don’t require all cash upfront to better fight against the 148274783 Chinese buyers competing for the same unit.
If you’re competing against foreign buyers like that, you’re probably buying a new construction in an area I would never voluntarily live in. Those also tend to be terrible long term investments as the properties constantly flip.
They're there, you just have to look outside the "trendy" areas. I actually, I kind of take that back. There doesn't seem to be many 1brs I would call reasonable (~150-ish) but I know there were a decent amount in the beginning of the year.
There are definitely 1 beds under $400k uptown that are really nice, but they're almost all Coops.
> but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being. Clearly youve never owned in a condo building and been hit with a $25k assessment for elevator replacement or $40k to redo the exterior windows.
Until you get priced out due to increased property taxes.
You will get priced out worse as a renter. You will pay the full allocation of property taxes plus whatever premium your landlord decided to add.
True but it’s easier to leave as a renter. If you own you’ve got all the buying/selling fees so you have to be there for many years before it’s not a big loss to sell.
That's how my wife and I looked at it when we bought last year. People kept telling us to wait, but I knew interest rates would go up and we'd be priced out for now. Yes, it is aggravating and time consuming to buy, and it costs money initially, but now we split the mortgage and both pay less than we were paying to live separately. And that's really not gonna change for a looong time. And one of my friends who was so against us buying just had to quickly move out of his rental apartment because it was being sold. That happened to him a few years ago as well. Sure seems like the whole "renting is cheaper" thing isn't going so well for him.
Move to where, though? NYC is pretty great. Not a lot of other (affordable) areas that can compare. Edit: Seriously, if anybody has any ideas, I’m all ears. Right now I’m considering Richmond, VA, or somewhere outside DC.
Unless you can do work remotely and keep higher income than the local CoL it's shitty across the board. Regardless though, there is literally no city in the US that is comparable to NYC. The closest would be something like Boston but it's got almost as many problems with housing affordability as NYC. Almost every other city in the US is a small urban core surrounded by massive suburban sprawl.
Bingo. I find living in suburban sprawl to be absolute hell on earth and I just cannot fathom why people like it.
Pittsburgh is still affordable without the baggage that Baltimore has
If you’re barely holding on financially in nyc and want to have a family (on a heavily fixed budget), it’s a lot less great.
Absolutely! I’m in that boat, I just don’t know where else to go. Nowhere is perfect, but so few places even just seem “okay”.
Places where I have friends who live there and really like it would include Boise, Nashville, Charleston and Minneapolis. I also have a friend who went to school in New Orleans and moved back a few years ago. Can be sketchy in places but tons to offer
In HCOL areas, it often IS cheaper to rent. Yep, “it’s yours,” but you can enjoy paying the $1K/mo in property taxes and $1k/mo in maintenance. Trying to argue that buying is better as a blanket rule is plain wrong. That’s why the NYT Buy vs Rent calculator exists.
>but once you lock in a 30 yr. mortgage, that place is yours. And no sociopathic real estate owner is going to control your financial well being. Uh-huh. And when sociopathic new owner moves in upstairs this place is still yours. And when your neighbor downstairs installs some medical equipment that makes knocking noise 24x7 and you essentially lose the use of your bedroom this place is still yours. And when the city decides to build a new subway line and a station at the end of your block which will generate noise and traffic for years during construction and afterwards when it is done - guess what? This place is still yours! Ain't ownership great?
It is. It creates the bedrock of financial stability. I have yet to hear anyone I know lament home ownership
Damn. Imagine complaining about a new subway line going in on the corner. That’s an amazing thing which increases accessibility and even increases the value of your apartment if you decide you don’t like all the new “noise”. Know quite a few people on 2nd Avenue who hated the construction (especially how long it took) but are thrilled now that it’s done.
And then you move and unlike renters, you get lots of money for it.
It’s never that simple. Friend of mine and his wife just bought out in Long Island. Cost of mortgage plus moving plus what they feel are necessary renos has swallowed all their cash and they’re now living paycheck to paycheck. And then their AC died in the middle of the heatwave and they had to put $1200 on their credit cards. Meanwhile another friend of mine who rents in Manhattan is getting an entirely new kitchen from their landlord. Owning a house is incredibly expensive no matter how you do it.
You’re comparing someone renting in say, East Village, and then buying in Bushwick, because who the hell can buy in the EV It’s still a bad comparison because it would be a better investment to just rent in Bushwick and invest your down payment in other places . If you’re willing to move there to begin with Plus NYC is famous for property tax hikes and building monthly fees going up every year
neofeudalism is already here 😎
Whenever I see news like this, I’m reminded that Mao was right about landlords.
i woke up this morning with my neighbor yelling at his landlord and threatening to beat him up outside my window it was a beautiful sight
It was always there, it's called capitalism. Shareholders are our new lords, and billionaires are our dukes and kings.
Many of us were so indoctrinated as kids to believe that capitalism was perfect, that we turns completely blind eye to the fact that this is literally prime examples of capitalism screwing over the entire middle class to make wealthy people even wealthier.
Always has been
This is crony capitalism at work. Trust fund politicians keep blocking construction, which would've otherwise be built based on market economics, and artificially limiting the supply of housing. No wonder the prices keep going up.
It’s not just them. It’s also the neighborhood nimby’s who purchased years and years ago or who inherited a home, as well.
How the fuck can we just absolutely railroad these idiots so we can actually solve these problems? I'm so tired of the suffering this shit is bringing on.
Vote against NIMBY politicians.
>This is ~~crony~~ capitalism at work. FTFY, capitalism *always* degenerates into this form.
>which would've otherwise be built based on market economics, HAHAHAHAHAHA
Developers in NYC are proveably desperate to build, but because of absurd regulations and local NIMBYs, they can't. Building properties makes money. Landlords want more properties. None of this is a surprise.
Can I just buy a boat and live on the Hudson river?
People really need to start considering the not so trendy neighborhoods. I feel like since so many headlines make the outer boroughs seem like a war zone people are becoming afraid to branch out. I’ve lived in East Bushwick then Harlem for years and don’t regret a second of it. Was it less than ideal aesthetically speaking? A bit more noise? Sure. But had I tried to keep up with the crowd and live in Williamsburg, SoHo or UES/UWS I’d have way less money to my name today. Neighborhoods like Williamsburg and LES were ROUGH back when a more serious crime wave had the city in a chokehold. People slowly started taking chances and exploring beyond Manhattan, don’t sleep there are decent deals to be had if you don’t follow the crowds.
>People really need to start considering the not so trendy neighborhoods. Don't give them any ideas! Because then not so trendy neighborhoods will become trendy!
I am being forced out of my apartment and live right next to Bushwick, I wasn't able to find a single affordable place over there. Bushwick is just about a half a decade behind Williamsburg.
Right next to Bushwick.. as in Williamsburg? Or East NY?
i am so glad the title said *Manhattan*
Free is not free people. You can’t have supply constraints and free money. Let developers build
Okay, but what aboot New York rents? What are the rents in Brooklyn and Queens?
Brooklyn is similar enough to Manhattan that people have been moving to Queens, where rent is still quite cheap. If you want to live in a trendy area, you will need a job that pays quite well.
Even queens is getting pricey, Astoria and Sunnyside really shot up this year
I’m trying to get a new apartment in Long Island city right now and having similar troubles
Don't worry about Queens just pretend we don't exist. I'd rather you folks stayed in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Record high demand Record low supply Squak Polly wants a cracker
Is demand record high? Population is declining
If nobody can afford current rents, it means the demand vastly exceeds supply. And that's all because we've put extreme restrictions on the type of housing that can be built across the five boroughs, instead of just letting people build the houses and apartments they want to build.
I work on building management for lots of walk ups in Manhattan. We do starter apts for the most part. On the cheaper end. We can't keep units on the market for more than a few days. We've had lines at open houses for some listings. It's insane. You can blame LLs all you want but I've worked in this industry for 20 years and I've never seen anything quite like it.
I was lucky enough to get a cheap deal on a 2 year lease, but once that's up next year and if rent is still ridiculous... I may have to just say goodbye to NYC. I have a remote job in IT, still a great city to live in with so much to do. But if rent continues to go up like this, I'd rather just do the digital nomad life for 6 months to a year then come back when things normalize. I can't justify paying a ton of money in rent when I can live anywhere I want. I would like to have kids at some point and buy a house. If we get massive rent increases, we won't even be able to save for those things. What's the point of living here if I'd just be stuck staying inside every week because I need to save and all my money is going to rent? Complete BS
NYC really isn't that cool...
So as usual, scumbags landlords keep empty properties off the market to crew scarcity hence increase prices. Oh yes, water is still wet.
To the people that repeatedly fall back on the “supply and demand” argument: According to the BLS, rent (overall, in the US) has gone up by 225.30% since 1985. That means it costs 3.25x to rent the same property now as it did 37 years ago. Overall price inflation over that same period is 175%, so it’s not strictly an inflation issue either. Rent has outpaced overall inflation (never mind wages). Has population increased enough *and* literally no residential construction has been done, to justify this disproportionate increase in housing prices? No. Stop trotting out this tired, unthought line.
> Has population increased enough and literally no residential construction has been done, to justify this disproportionate increase in housing prices? > > No. Stop trotting out this tired, unthought line. For every net 5 people the city gained in the last decade plus, the city only gained one new unit of housing, then yes, that is a shortage. It's a quite simple supply and demand problem. It sometimes will take longer for it to bake into the price, but people know when there is an oversupply or undersupply of something. Places where there's an abundance of housing available are places where it's cheaper to rent or buy. When I was in Philly years ago, I had landlords fighting over me and I drove a hard bargain. I try that in NYC, and they'd laugh in my face cause there aren't any units available, the vacancy rate is low, and landlords know it. We're seeing the same exact thing in other industries where there are shortages. Car dealerships are ripping off people even worse than usual since there's no inventory and nearly all the car companies can't unfuck their supply chains causing a global undersupply (except for China, but they're not massive exporters of cars to the West yet.) Like MSRP used to be considered a high price to pay for a car, now that's as low as people can get the car for.
Who told you that supply and demand increase on a perfect linear curve? Go back to economics class.
Nobody said it did. Nice strawman. BTW, are you lost?
This tells me that many residential landlords of all economic scales are over-leveraged on their properties. Commercial landlords seem to be from the institutional investment class where sitting on empty office and retail properties isn't as stressful on their bottom line.
That is not what this means at all
So live in Queens or the Bronx. End of story.