How About Renting in NY?

So we don't have the $2,000,000 to lay down for a nice pad in NYC. Would renting be an option? The Real Estate Group New York, which produces monthly Manhattan rental reports, has come out with it's April Report. The latest figures show that there was an uptick in rental prices, but most places are still pretty cheap when compared to last years.

Now cheap is a relative thing. I believe that prices are still crazy. Two bedroom apartments in the Lower East Side are running at $3000/month on average. If you factor that your gross annual income should be about 45x the monthly rental, that comes out to a salary of $135,000 a year. Still though, using a calculator for take home pay, that salary translates to about $7000/month. This means the average rental would be 43% of monthly take home pay. That is ridiculous!

Even areas like Harlem run about $2000/month, which requires a $90,000 salary. Also, these rate are for non-doorman apartments. You want a doorman, be prepared to spend another $1000/month. That is some price for the luxury.

So, this means that renting is not a good option unless I had a super well paying job. We would need at least a 3 bedroom apartment in a good neighborhood. That means paying almost $4000/month which requires a $180,000 combined salary. Right now we are almost surviving with a single income, so would like to maintain that as long as possible.

Why $2,000,000?

In my post on 5 Steps to Acquiring the Dream, Step one was setting a quantifiable goal for a piece of property in Manhattan. I said $2,000,000 was the price I was aiming for. This number was not pulled out of thin air. Some research was done to arrive at it.

I went to the Trulia NYC website, and looked for 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartments/condos/co-ops on Manhattan. A minimum of 2000 square feet was also chosen. The results started at $1,500,000 and went all the way up to $30,000,000. Needless to say, I stayed closer to the bottom end. Even at that price, the home sizes were pretty decent. Ideally, I would like to be somewhere nearer to midtown, which would offer good walking access to the theaters and central park. I did find some deals there.

Now of course, right now in April 2010, we are probably near the tail-end of a major recession and real estate prices have taken a hit. Who know what prices maybe when we can afford $2,000,000. Lets hope we don't have another run up like we did before this last bubble.

Curbed NY Real Estate Website

I was looking around for blogs on NYC real estate and ran into Curbed NY. It quite a feature packed place. They have quite a few daily updates with information on local sales and news. Some of the information here is a bit on the entertainment side, such as a post on where Matt Damon has been real estate shopping. For the most part though, the information is good, such as daily open house listings as well as a complete Sunday open house guide for buyers and renters.

Then there are sections for current sales and rentals. Their listing cross multiple agencies and allow you to narrow down your search, whether it is the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, or the max dollars you want to spend. The results are given is the normal list format that is sortable for varied fields such as bedrooms, square footage, or price. The indiviual listings provide photos as well as an embedded google map that is expandable.

All in all, Curbed NY is a great site for a NYC real estate junkie. They also have sites for the Hamptons, San Francisco and Los Angeles.