“If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, “how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?”
Thanks for the stereotype, but I think we just want the right to keep our labour, not hand part of it over to the boomers and part to the banks, thanks.
"Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a friction-free environment? It irritated me that a 25-year-old would soon be lolling in my bed"
Really amazing. Such a soft option living in a cupboard and paying a fortune for it, or a fortune for other alternatives.
Yes, that's exactly how it's supposed to work, each generation is supposed to "pay it forward". This is always how it worked, if you think about it, until recent advances in medicine simply no generation lived long enough to collect rent from their children, it's a concept invented by the baby boomers.
These are stupid. Carmel Place is in Murray Hill. That neighborhood has many normal sized (450-500 square foot) studios in the $2,500 range. Not like gross old units either, nicely renovated ones.
As the first such units to come onto the markets, these units are unfortunately priced as a luxury, because of their uniqueness. They thus definitely don't make sense for people who are just looking for value for their money, which is probably most people. If the market had thousands of units like this then you would see them priced below the $2,500 450-500 sqft units as they should be, but until then, the larger units will be the sensible choice.
It's not a normal studio, it's furnished and sounds quite luxe despite the size:
> Carmel Place’s rent includes not just internet and Wi-Fi, but a weekly tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie.
I don't think that they've missed the demographics - surely those amenities are in-keeping with a young professional market? As in, small space, nicely outfitted and time saving extras - considering they'd be working long hours and going out to socialise, seems well suited?
Funny you mention that. I lived in a great 1BR apartment in Murray Hill for $2,600 up until about 18 months ago. My unit was relatively large, on the 7th floor of an elevator/doorman building, we had a communal roof deck, laundry in building, and south facing light. The downside was that it was on 34th st so a bit noisy and the unit was probably 30+ years old so appliances were kind of crappy, but everything was well maintained. Basically it was an affordable upper-middle class oasis in a sea of luxury apartments.
The crazy thing is that the building could not be built today. It was 20 stories with about 15 units per floor and according to the recent NYTimes article it is no longer approved for the zoning of that neighborhood.
I'm not sure we need microapartments as much as we need to look at where people can afford to live today and clone that over and over. That's not the recipe for all of NYC, but in a neighborhood like Murray Hill where every other building is huge, why not just build out even more?
While the lion’s share — 32 — of the units are market rate, with monthly rents ranging from $2,446 to $3,195, eight have been set aside for formerly homeless veterans, and 14 units are designated affordable, with monthly rents from $914 to $1,873, and for which 60,000 people applied in a lottery.
Is it just odd word choice or does "formerly homeless" mean they're put up somewhere until these are ready to lease? Also, do these homeless vets have work? Or am I misreading this paragraph entirely?
This isn't any sort of indictment on the homeless population...just, $914 for something of that size is affordable pretty much only by New York (and I guess SF) standards, and I wonder if instead of putting a dent (maybe even a scratch) in some of the problems that creates chronic homelessness, if this is just cycling through a series of "guests" who stay for maybe months at a time and end right back up on the street.
I suppose I have to take the article at its word: "It's a start".
The 8 homeless vet units are separate from the 14 affordable units, and are probably being paid for by some combination of federal, state, and city dollars. The affordable units were awarded by lottery open to anyone meeting the income guidelines.
Also in official NYC-government-speak homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the street. It means a lack of "secure, adequate, and permanent" housing. So it includes situations like living in a shelter or in a doubled up situation (e.g. on a relative's couch).
So, I lived in a micro apartment last year in Vancouver. Newly renovated like the one in this video, albeit with less features (no dishwasher or multi-purpose furniture.) The apartment shown in this video is a luxurious 300sqft. My "apartment" was smaller than this.
While the space is acceptable, technically, to live in - I can't recommend it if you have the choice of a larger place. These sorts of places typically feature high ceilings, which is nice, but that's about all they have going for them.
For me, coming home felt more like arriving at a hotel. With everything so tightly packed, there was a constant need to pack things away and shuffle items around. It's hard to feel at home when you can barely even (and possibly even not at all!) fit your own furniture in your place.
Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom.
I won't dispute this is a better living situation than many people currently have, but given the price tag of these apartments (I paid over $1000/mo here, $2500-3000 in Murray Hill for 300sqft???) I would advise finding somewhere else to live. Somewhere that has a doorway to walk through that separates your living spaces.
> Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom.
That's exactly my thought. I'd rather just have a normal bed, save a couple of square feet of floor space, and maybe be able to cram in some more storage under or over it.
I think the whole point is being very close to whatever is attractive in Manhattan, at a price of both serious rent and small area. A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads.
Otherwise, Brooklyn and Queens offer much more cost-effective, well-connected, entirely urban neighborhoods, maybe not as dense but still perfectly walkable, bikable, and equipped with subway. The cost is, of course, 20-40 more minutes to/from Manhattan.
A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads.
In Tokyo, this apartment fits reasonably cleanly in the 1DK category ([1] room, dedicated [d]ining/[k]itchen space). It's bog standard. Prices, even in the most desirable neighborhoods, would be a lot closer to $1k than to $3k, and generally coming from the downside.
From what I can see in the video, it seems to fall more into the 1K category - a single room with a kitchen - making this even more pricy! 1DK tends to have two separate rooms, one of which can be quite small. Agreed on the price - a quick search for 1K or 1DK apartments in the most expensive ward in Japan shows that only even the most spacious apartments ever go over that range:
Indeed, I previously lived in a 2LDK in a very nice tower mansion in that ward (in Shibaura, near Mita Station), and that was around 700sqft for under $2500. I was sharing with a friend (so my rent was only half that) but it was amazingly comfortable.
My current place is a 1DK, slightly smaller than the apartment in the article, but even that feels big for one person. In any case, after living in Tokyo, I find it hard to describe a 300sqft apartment as "tiny."
I lived in a 1K apartment in Ebisu, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo for 2 years in 2007-2009. It was 270 sq feet and approximately $1,200 per month. It wasn't as nice as the apartment in the video but was vastly cheaper. For those unfamiliar, Ebisu is arguably one of the most desirable places to live in Tokyo if you're going to be in the middle of the city.
It was basically a dorm room. I was able to downsize to make it work and it was freeing to reduce my possessions to the necessities.
Anyway, yes, this sort of tiny apartment appeared to be the norm for single 20-somethings in Tokyo.
I don't see it. For all the problems in Japan, young people seem happy and content and their prospects seem much better than prospects of young people in USA. I look at USA and see millions of people living miserable lives with no way to escape.
Yes, the corporate culture is terrible but some people decide not to participate (job availability went up recently but unemployment didn't go down). Some people are putting the foot down and things are slowly changing.
You can point at suicide rate, I'll point at police brutality in US, the mass shootings, rampant drug problems (including painkiller epidemic), obesity, health problems (how many people are on disability?).
So when you come out and say how terrible life is in Japan, have a good hard look at the land of the free. From what I see there's no milk and honey left for 99% of the people.
US citizen here, early 30s. My wife and I are preparing to head out as expats when our child arrives. We're paying ~$700/month in health insurance premiums (going up to $1000 next year per our insurer, before adding our newborn), real estate is expensive anywhere where non-remote jobs are plentiful, as well as the issues you mentioned.
I love my country, I simply hate what its government and citizens have done to it :(
A very similar situation there is in Tokyo: young professionals rent microscopic apartments close to work and the downtown founts of intense social life, and only use them as sleeping pads.
MANY times on travel I have wished for one of these to get 3-4 hours of sleep but no I have to sleep on the floor in the airport in chicago because "this isn't human" or some such bunk. I'm not paying $160 for 3-4 hours in an airport hotel. Heck it's an hour to get settled into the hotel from the airport and an hour back, plus security. So like great $160 for 1.5 hours. Thanks.
I don't agree that the point is living very close to the heart of the city since there are larger places in Manhattan for less money.
I moved into the ues from bk 2 years ago and pay $1800 for a one bedroom (700sq feet).
Commute, door to door, from midtown is 25 minutes (86/lex -> 42nd) and with the 2nd avenue subway (hopefully) opening in December should reduce that by 5-10 minutes.
Honestly I'd rather just do what I did when I first lived in SF and NYC: get a bigger space with a couple people. For me, having a spacious social area and respectably sized bedroom trumps having complete and utter privacy.
As someone who is interviewing around the bay area for hardware engineering positions that pay between 90-110K starting (I'm from Detroit), this terrifies me if I do choose to move here. Half of my after tax salary would go to rent. I don't know if the premium is really worth the SV environment. GM and Ford pay 65K-75K starting and you can get a 1200 sq apartment in Ann Arbor, Dearborn or around Detroit for half the price of that walk in closet they call an apartment. And to anyone who says "buts its Detroit", come for a visit. The Detroit Metro area is not as bad as you think.
3 years ago I moved away from the state capital (Adelaide, South Australia) to a 100,000-ish people city in another state (Launceston, Tasmania). Haven't looked back. I'm paying $1100 a month for a three bedroom house. I live 10 minute drive from the city centre. Work is 1.5k away (about a mile). Looking to buy a place similar to the one we're renting for around the $220,000 mark, which is three years income for me. Any place I wanted to live in Adelaide was way out of my price range.
edit: I guess lots of people just live where they were born, or move to a bigger place for the education / work opportunities, or the lifestyle. Then there's the sea-changers and tree-changers. I think I've undergone a tree-change.
Adelaide is not a big city. Adelaide is a small, very affordable city. A big city is Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, London, NY, Tokyo.
Its good you have found something you like, but I have no need for so much space. Why would I, I think it is wasteful. And having to own a car, I would hate that.
You got that right, the housing market is getting more expensive here all the time. I pay slightly less than you for a 1B flat down at Glenelg (though I do have a sunroom which I use for my office). Mind you, I have no need for anymore room than that; I downsized from a 4B house in Brompton which was cool but ended up getting too expensive (and getting housemates was a pain).
I'm in the Detroit area as well, and about 10 years ago I almost ended up in the SF bay area. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't. I work for one of the big 3 and while I don't make nearly what I would if I was out on the west coast, I'm comfortable financially, have a place that fits me well and -- as you know -- there's a ton of non-work-y things to do. Particularly if you like the outdoors...
I'd give a move like that serious thought, especially if you can land something decent in the area. The salary delta will more than be eaten by what you'll pay for rent. The hardest part in our area is finding comparable social stuff, but it's really not that hard... There's tons of like-minded people around.
I'm from Detroit as well, moved out here 3 years ago. I will probably move back in the next 2-3 years, but I currently make about $15k/mo doing software contracting (this is before paying any taxes, health care, etc.). I live in Mountain View, have a 700-800 sq ft 1 bedroom for $3000/mo. I currently am easily able to save $5k/mo towards retirement. I don't think I could do nearly as well as this financially back home.
I used to live in this apartment complex. One thing that drove me nuts is that the bathroom (with a full-sized bathtub) took up half the apartment -- so you had even less space for your bed. (I could only comfortably fit a twin.)
The apartment shown in the article appears to have a shower instead of a bathtub, which hopefully gives you more room for a bed. In hindsight, I wished this apartment had a conventional oven instead of a dishwasher; feeding myself I only owned two plates, two bowls, two cups, and some cutlery (which can easily be hand-washed in the sink, especially in a drought).
When these SF micro-apartments were approved, local press suggested they'd rent for $800-$1000/month (based on 1br rental rates at the time) -- the entire market (including these apartments) is now 3x-4x that.
I made it about a minute and couldn't take the reporter anymore - if you're going to do video, try to hire someone with more life than a dead carpet to do the speaking part.
While she may be a fine writer, clearly, she isn't a presenter for video.
> “New York has long been a leader in social innovation,” Mr. Klinenberg said. “The trend of living alone happened here before anywhere else.”
I don't understand. Check Bay Area Craigslist and you will find that a rich selection of small studios is available for rent on any given day. And they're much more affordable than the one in this article too.
Even though we found our place on craigslist, be aware that 90% of postings are scams. In the City, you really need to remember the phrase "if it's too good to be true, it probably is".
I rented three times off Craigslist and have not had any trouble. I did respond to a couple of the ads that were "too good to be true" just for the heck of it. The poster came back with a request to wire them money, which was pretty obviously a scam. I wouldn't rent without seeing the place first so this was not a problem anyway. But if you're trying to rent sight-unseen, then you probably should use a service with more serious vetting.
I think what happens is that every property manager and landlord lists on Craigslist, as well as a few other places. Craigslist is pretty much a superset of all apartment ads in the area. Some of these other sites copy Craigslist, and some just have duplicate postings put there by the landlords.
Oh, that's a "micro apartment?" It looks the same size as my San Francisco Soma apartment, or perhaps slightly larger. I don't have any of the fancy specialized furniture either, so my queen sized bed, wardrobe, and desk take up most of the room.
i lived in a 140 square foot apartment in new york which had formerly been a single room occupancy built over 100 years ago.
small tenement like housing is nothing new.
small apartments slowly create cabin fever-------ANXIETY.
if you live in a small space you must spend a lot more time outside of it than inside of a normal sized space.
also, it is vital to have minimum 9 foot high cielings for a small space. i had 8 foot ceilings that are standard in new york.
finally, a loft in a room with lower than 10 foot cielings means you cannot have a 5'10 foot person stand comfortably underneath the loft and have a 5'10 foot person on their knees in bed on top of the loft without one of them hitting their head on the underside of either the celiing or the bottom of the loft.
furthermore, a loft gets very hot in the summer and remains somewhat warmer than the floor in the winter. this effect increases inversely with measure of distance between the loft surface to the cieling
I have a friend in Paris who lives with his wife in 33 m^2 (355 sqft). Their apartment is not even technically a studio, but rather a 1BR, they routinely host dinner parties with up to 8-10 people. I've also heard people compliment them on the size of the apartment, they probably lived in places of about half the surface.
If they are serious about space efficiency, they should look at layouts Soviets developed to "warehouse" their citizen in - no luxury, but it really worked magic with efficiency.
The major difference is that you have a separation of space with the kitchen and hallway (with closets). That separation made it fairly livable for a family with a child! (Don't recommend stuffing a teenager in there, but it has been done...)
The completely open studio layout will likely not be great even for a couple, as sometimes your really do need space or privacy. A blocked off kitchen affords that and doubles as a decent home office.
I don't recall us resorting to space-efficient furniture, but then again Soviet furniture was smaller already and I did sleep on a foldout couch.
For entertaining, that tiny kitchen actually fit 5-6 people reasonably well. I think our informal record was 14 (3 standing, rest comfortably seating).
The kitchen became such a part of the culture as a place to sit down and talk privately, that there have been articles and books written about it. It really highlights the genius utility of that small extra space. Unfortunately, all I could find in English is a really terrible NPR article that shows a place you'd need a hasmat suit to enter as a "typical" Russian kitchen... Still the utility is amazing!
EDIT: as discussed below, Tokyo calls such layout 1DK (with 2 rooms effectively, 2nd being the kitchen). These are much more desirable than the 1K true studio apartments.
I was just about to comment, that this "apartment" is pretty much identical in size and layout to an apartment my parents got from the communist government of Poland in the 70s. It was small, but at least it was free - is $2400/month a common price in New York? I currently live in UK and pay $900/month for a detached 3 bedroom house, $2400/month is more than I make a month as a c++ programmer - just seems very very high to me.
Edit: I do make more than $2400/month, I fudged the conversion rate
For people working remote, move to Bucharest. It's not just a little cheaper - it's 10x cheaper! 420$/mo (Bu) instead of 4600$/mo for two rooms in NY. Check it out here at the bottom of the list:
Internet speeds are great and it only costs 10$/month to get 1gbps (probably just 100mbs external, 1gbps metropolitan). Americans are well regarded by everyone, especially girls :-)
Bucharest has bad traffic congestion, but that's only a problem if you commute to work during rush hour. If you work remote, you don't need to worry about it.
Another negative is bureaucracy. The system is overly complex, stupid sometimes. If you need to open a company or get hired locally it can be a PITA.
Young people can speak English, some quite well. But older people don't.
None. Great airport connections, great food, great night life, nice weather, 2h away from seaside or mountains by train. Bonus: 1 gbps for 55 RON (14 USD)
Old communist blocks in some areas don't make the city look too nice, but most don't care about that. New York has worse looking areas.
About the bureacracy: it's better than Germany or UK for example, but everything moves way slower sometimes.
Neah if you're going to work remotely there's way better places in Romania to live in than Bucharest.
Cluj Napoca for instance is a major university town with a lot of students, the costs got down and the areas get quieter and cleaner.
Oh and the internet service is identical since all cities offer about the same speeds all over the country.
I'm a bit partial to Cluj since I have a lot of friends who decided to settle there after graduating and have a bit better knowledge of the city than others but any similar city will do.
> $2400/month is more than I make a month as a c++ programmer - just seems very very high to me.
Strongly consider asking for a pay raise, and/or applying for some new jobs in your local area. That sounds terribly low for a UK-based C++ position. Even in smaller cities and with a year or two of experience you could expect 30% more.
If you live in the UK and make $2400 as a C++ programmer, you are being exploited. £20k a year is not much more than minimum wage, and university graduate salaries are far higher than that even in low-skill industries.
You make less than 30k as a cpp programmer? That's crazy!!! Am I missing something here or what? I work in Washington State, US and I make 4x that as a new grad.
Well, UK and US salaries are not really comparable. I live in North East of England, where rent is cheap, my health insurance is like $100 a month, I only work 37.5h/week, get 25 paid vacation days + unlimited paid sick leave.....in that context you don't need to be making $100k/year to have a decent living. If I was in London then sure, that wouldn't be enough, but out here in the North it's actually quite comfortable.
I pay 1100 used (750 pounds) for a small 1bed flat in city centre Edinburgh and paid significantly more when I lived in Dublin. Whereabouts are you based?
3200? Did she say the cost for that apartment is 3200? First I thought I heard 320. That would be okay. It's the size of a university dorm room (at least where I live). 320 is an okay price for that. But 3200? There are a lot of places on that planet where you can rent a villa for less, a lot less.
Yes. Again, the goal here is building housing in Manhattan, not building housing for highly developed countries in general.
People who aren't familiar with New York City (especially people whose impression of housing is influenced by San Francisco) may not realize that the city has a generally-competent public transit infrastructure, making is possible to work in Manhattan without living in Manhattan or even in New York City and without hating your life. Of course, housing in the outer boroughs and in nearby cities is also expensive compared to, say, housing in a small university town somewhere in the Midwest. But this project is specifically about increasing the density of housing in Manhattan itself, which will hopefully let demand from people who can pay $3200/month shift away from the outer boroughs and nearby cities.
You are right that my confusion is about the squaremeter price in NYC in general, not in this project specifically. That is exactly my point. I don't want to bring any other point. Why are we still arguing about this point?
It's a downer to me, that despite the stated aim of "keeping housing affordable", prices of such apartments will usually default to "still eating most of the household's income".
Is this proof for too much or too less government intervention? Or is the usual increase in price caused by the new micro-renters themselves, in that they are increasing attractiveness of the area?
I think it's most likely just that: We're bad savers and not being in the red at the end of the month will turn off the biggest behavioral signal for switching expenditure habits.
New York still has plenty of underdeveloped areas, ever in and really close to the centre of town. (Rent control is partially to blame here, I think. Zoning, too. But locals might be able to tell you more.)
Overall, even with all of the city centre built up to 40 stories, you'll still see relatively high rent---the location is just too good to do business in; so people will bid it up.
I think when folks focus on the price point of new construction being high, they're missing the bigger picture: These kinds of new units put downward price pressure on whatever was previously "lower on the totem pole". In other words, those studios in Murray Hill without a door man / elevator which were already priced below this price point will become even less luxurious looking as these are built.. that means that "regular folks" who don't care to live in these shiny shoe boxes prosper!
What your describing happened in the used car market c4c caused a panic that put the price floor of the bottom of the used car market in a place it couldn't have naturally got itself to. This put upward pressure on the entire market. It became much more profitable to have a bunch of higher end used (CPO, certified pre owned) cars lying around to sell. To churn those out better leases became more available. At the same time it became harder to write a housing loan that would obviously flop. Banks started writing more bad new car loans. The incentive to do so being that if it defaults soon enough the car will get repo'd, auctioned and bought by a dealer to be sold as certified pre owned and the loan is in the black at the end of it all. Go look at the average prices for various new/used vehicle categories and you'll see an upward trend everywhere.
Allowing any part of the market to go upward in price puts upward pressure on the rest of the market because there's now more competition for whatever hasn't become out of reach.
Housing, transportation, education and a few others are necessities that pretty much everyone needs the same amount of. Until you saturate the entire market in an area with high end stuff to the point where the price of the high end stuff decreases dramatically the price of low end stuff will rise. It's really hard to saturate the housing market with expensive and new because no developer will build more nice expensive stuff when there's a larger profit margin building cheaper low end stuff that's been driven up in price by all the high end stuff.
I lived in an apartment smaller than this in Lausanne Switzerland. This seems like luxury in comparison (granted, mine only cost 800 CHF in rent but...).
That's true, I'm not the most sociable of people and a lot of what makes cities attractive is wasted on me.
When I moved to the country it was the libraries and the bookshops I missed.
Today with broadband and amazon, I don't miss those either.
"If groovy millennials are all about cooking and Instagramming the vegan cheesecakes they are making,” she said later, "how do you live that life with a two-burner stove?"
I take it this person doesn't cook. My first apartment (which was quite a bit smaller than this apparent) came with a two burner stove and no oven. With those two burners, a rice cooker and the small toaster style oven I bought, I quite comfortable cooked just about anything you'd care mention.
> It’s also adorable, a compressed vision of the city in both ethos and mien.
Imagine a "groovy millennial" Instagrammming a vegan cheesecake -- forever. I appreciate the job the NYT Real Estate section does. Without them (and Style) the newspaper probably would no longer exist. But articles like this are so devoid of reality that I understand why everyone thinks people are crazy to live in New York City.
As a non New Yorker that price for the square footage is astronomical to me! I live in a small rural town in Georgia and I pay $890 a month to rent a 1618 sq foot house (+ a large front porch). The house is over 100 years old and it for sure has it's quirks, but for the price it's great. I can live in this house for 3-4 months for the cost of 1 month in that apartment which is about 1/5th the size!
I know that New York salaries are typically higher to compensate, but I work remote for a company as a front-end designer/dev and make a good living without having to pay "big city" prices. I get the appeal of living in a big with though, Atlanta is near by and I love visiting; but I greatly prefer saving my money and/or spending it on things other than expensive rent.
Nah, that price per square foot is pretty high even by NYC standards (almost double what's typical for that neighborhood, which is expensive fore city as a whole but middle-high for Manhattan).
And one of the things you learn here pretty quickly is that you don't REALLY need all that much space. My first apartment was about 300 sqft, and a third of it went entirely unused. My current studio is probably 450, and while I have a ton more stuff now than I did then, the amount of space is more than adequate. I wouldn't know what to do with 1600 sqft even with a spouse and kids! Oh, and costs about 2/3 as much as that apartment, in an arguably nicer neighborhood in Brooklyn. /shrug
We each have our own priorities for what we're willing to pay for.
The problem with multi-functional, stowaway etc furniture is it tends to fall apart pretty quick with daily use. In couple of years you'll have issues with engaging that table's feet in unfolded position, that neat wardrobe hanger will fall out on you when you open doors and so on. And it's not really a huge choice with this kind of furniture to replace.
The table looked very awkward. I actually previously had a solid wood IKEA table with two folding leaves and storage space in between, which cost about £200, and looked a lot more usable (and attractive) than that table. Admittedly you could only get 6 people round it rather than 8/10. But then again, it didn't cost £3000.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadThanks for the stereotype, but I think we just want the right to keep our labour, not hand part of it over to the boomers and part to the banks, thanks.
"Perhaps this apartment is too good, too soft, for the demographic it purports to address. How will they mature in a friction-free environment? It irritated me that a 25-year-old would soon be lolling in my bed"
Really amazing. Such a soft option living in a cupboard and paying a fortune for it, or a fortune for other alternatives.
> Carmel Place’s rent includes not just internet and Wi-Fi, but a weekly tidying service and a monthly deep clean, along with dog walking, dry cleaning pickup and any number of customized errands through an app called Hello Alfred, all organized by Ollie.
Are they in the cheap, low end or luxury high end industry?
People who want those amenities are in the luxury market. They want a much bigger apartment.
The people who want a 300 ft studio are in the cheap market. They don't care about these amenities.
The crazy thing is that the building could not be built today. It was 20 stories with about 15 units per floor and according to the recent NYTimes article it is no longer approved for the zoning of that neighborhood.
I'm not sure we need microapartments as much as we need to look at where people can afford to live today and clone that over and over. That's not the recipe for all of NYC, but in a neighborhood like Murray Hill where every other building is huge, why not just build out even more?
Unless prices have skyrocketed in the last year, this is pretty dumb.
Is it just odd word choice or does "formerly homeless" mean they're put up somewhere until these are ready to lease? Also, do these homeless vets have work? Or am I misreading this paragraph entirely?
This isn't any sort of indictment on the homeless population...just, $914 for something of that size is affordable pretty much only by New York (and I guess SF) standards, and I wonder if instead of putting a dent (maybe even a scratch) in some of the problems that creates chronic homelessness, if this is just cycling through a series of "guests" who stay for maybe months at a time and end right back up on the street.
I suppose I have to take the article at its word: "It's a start".
Also in official NYC-government-speak homeless doesn't necessarily mean living on the street. It means a lack of "secure, adequate, and permanent" housing. So it includes situations like living in a shelter or in a doubled up situation (e.g. on a relative's couch).
While the space is acceptable, technically, to live in - I can't recommend it if you have the choice of a larger place. These sorts of places typically feature high ceilings, which is nice, but that's about all they have going for them.
For me, coming home felt more like arriving at a hotel. With everything so tightly packed, there was a constant need to pack things away and shuffle items around. It's hard to feel at home when you can barely even (and possibly even not at all!) fit your own furniture in your place.
Murphy beds seem like a fun idea, but unless you're entertaining guests you'll end up just leaving it down during the day (if you're like me, that is..) You then come home to what is essentially a bedroom.
I won't dispute this is a better living situation than many people currently have, but given the price tag of these apartments (I paid over $1000/mo here, $2500-3000 in Murray Hill for 300sqft???) I would advise finding somewhere else to live. Somewhere that has a doorway to walk through that separates your living spaces.
That's exactly my thought. I'd rather just have a normal bed, save a couple of square feet of floor space, and maybe be able to cram in some more storage under or over it.
Otherwise, Brooklyn and Queens offer much more cost-effective, well-connected, entirely urban neighborhoods, maybe not as dense but still perfectly walkable, bikable, and equipped with subway. The cost is, of course, 20-40 more minutes to/from Manhattan.
In Tokyo, this apartment fits reasonably cleanly in the 1DK category ([1] room, dedicated [d]ining/[k]itchen space). It's bog standard. Prices, even in the most desirable neighborhoods, would be a lot closer to $1k than to $3k, and generally coming from the downside.
1K : http://madori.chintai.net/1k/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/
1DK: http://madori.chintai.net/1dk/tokyo/area/13103/o=3/
My current place is a 1DK, slightly smaller than the apartment in the article, but even that feels big for one person. In any case, after living in Tokyo, I find it hard to describe a 300sqft apartment as "tiny."
It was basically a dorm room. I was able to downsize to make it work and it was freeing to reduce my possessions to the necessities.
Anyway, yes, this sort of tiny apartment appeared to be the norm for single 20-somethings in Tokyo.
Yes, the corporate culture is terrible but some people decide not to participate (job availability went up recently but unemployment didn't go down). Some people are putting the foot down and things are slowly changing.
You can point at suicide rate, I'll point at police brutality in US, the mass shootings, rampant drug problems (including painkiller epidemic), obesity, health problems (how many people are on disability?).
So when you come out and say how terrible life is in Japan, have a good hard look at the land of the free. From what I see there's no milk and honey left for 99% of the people.
I love my country, I simply hate what its government and citizens have done to it :(
This is where that trend is heading: http://blog.sleepinginairports.net/2015/10/13/zzzleepandgo-b...
I moved into the ues from bk 2 years ago and pay $1800 for a one bedroom (700sq feet).
Commute, door to door, from midtown is 25 minutes (86/lex -> 42nd) and with the 2nd avenue subway (hopefully) opening in December should reduce that by 5-10 minutes.
I agree. Both are not really worth the price.
Screw the big cities.
edit: I guess lots of people just live where they were born, or move to a bigger place for the education / work opportunities, or the lifestyle. Then there's the sea-changers and tree-changers. I think I've undergone a tree-change.
Adelaide is not a big city. Adelaide is a small, very affordable city. A big city is Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, London, NY, Tokyo.
Its good you have found something you like, but I have no need for so much space. Why would I, I think it is wasteful. And having to own a car, I would hate that.
I'd give a move like that serious thought, especially if you can land something decent in the area. The salary delta will more than be eaten by what you'll pay for rent. The hardest part in our area is finding comparable social stuff, but it's really not that hard... There's tons of like-minded people around.
The apartment shown in the article appears to have a shower instead of a bathtub, which hopefully gives you more room for a bed. In hindsight, I wished this apartment had a conventional oven instead of a dishwasher; feeding myself I only owned two plates, two bowls, two cups, and some cutlery (which can easily be hand-washed in the sink, especially in a drought).
When these SF micro-apartments were approved, local press suggested they'd rent for $800-$1000/month (based on 1br rental rates at the time) -- the entire market (including these apartments) is now 3x-4x that.
It's only a matter of time before the bed/living area gets crammed into the kitchen like I've seen in some of the weirder parts of London.
[0] http://www.elliman.com/pdf/eed565a3adc1c94a4ccc9243ad0b932f6...
While she may be a fine writer, clearly, she isn't a presenter for video.
I don't understand. Check Bay Area Craigslist and you will find that a rich selection of small studios is available for rent on any given day. And they're much more affordable than the one in this article too.
There aren't a lot of better options, aside from cold-calling apartment management companies. Everyone lists on Craigslist.
small tenement like housing is nothing new.
small apartments slowly create cabin fever-------ANXIETY.
if you live in a small space you must spend a lot more time outside of it than inside of a normal sized space.
also, it is vital to have minimum 9 foot high cielings for a small space. i had 8 foot ceilings that are standard in new york.
finally, a loft in a room with lower than 10 foot cielings means you cannot have a 5'10 foot person stand comfortably underneath the loft and have a 5'10 foot person on their knees in bed on top of the loft without one of them hitting their head on the underside of either the celiing or the bottom of the loft.
furthermore, a loft gets very hot in the summer and remains somewhat warmer than the floor in the winter. this effect increases inversely with measure of distance between the loft surface to the cieling
I grew up in 33 m^2 apartment. Layout is similar to this, minus the balcony: http://cdn.gdeetotdom.ru/b/b9f1203ec7061e6dc65984ff104ecfb7-...
The major difference is that you have a separation of space with the kitchen and hallway (with closets). That separation made it fairly livable for a family with a child! (Don't recommend stuffing a teenager in there, but it has been done...)
The completely open studio layout will likely not be great even for a couple, as sometimes your really do need space or privacy. A blocked off kitchen affords that and doubles as a decent home office.
I don't recall us resorting to space-efficient furniture, but then again Soviet furniture was smaller already and I did sleep on a foldout couch.
For entertaining, that tiny kitchen actually fit 5-6 people reasonably well. I think our informal record was 14 (3 standing, rest comfortably seating).
The kitchen became such a part of the culture as a place to sit down and talk privately, that there have been articles and books written about it. It really highlights the genius utility of that small extra space. Unfortunately, all I could find in English is a really terrible NPR article that shows a place you'd need a hasmat suit to enter as a "typical" Russian kitchen... Still the utility is amazing!
EDIT: as discussed below, Tokyo calls such layout 1DK (with 2 rooms effectively, 2nd being the kitchen). These are much more desirable than the 1K true studio apartments.
Edit: I do make more than $2400/month, I fudged the conversion rate
http://ceoworld.biz/2015/10/19/top-50-most-expensive-cities-...
Internet speeds are great and it only costs 10$/month to get 1gbps (probably just 100mbs external, 1gbps metropolitan). Americans are well regarded by everyone, especially girls :-)
Another negative is bureaucracy. The system is overly complex, stupid sometimes. If you need to open a company or get hired locally it can be a PITA.
Young people can speak English, some quite well. But older people don't.
Old communist blocks in some areas don't make the city look too nice, but most don't care about that. New York has worse looking areas.
About the bureacracy: it's better than Germany or UK for example, but everything moves way slower sometimes.
Not knowing the local language, culture, customs, bureaucracy or legal structures
With enough time and/or focus, one of these sentences can be rectified though
Cluj Napoca for instance is a major university town with a lot of students, the costs got down and the areas get quieter and cleaner.
Oh and the internet service is identical since all cities offer about the same speeds all over the country.
I'm a bit partial to Cluj since I have a lot of friends who decided to settle there after graduating and have a bit better knowledge of the city than others but any similar city will do.
Strongly consider asking for a pay raise, and/or applying for some new jobs in your local area. That sounds terribly low for a UK-based C++ position. Even in smaller cities and with a year or two of experience you could expect 30% more.
Prices are much higher in cities even in the uk.
750 pounds for a 3 bedroom detached house. We pay 600/month but the house is slightly less fancy.
Here is an interesting article on soviet kitchens on NPR if you don't have the time to read a book about it .
How Soviet Kitchens Became Hotbeds Of Dissent And Culture http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/27/314961287/how...
People who aren't familiar with New York City (especially people whose impression of housing is influenced by San Francisco) may not realize that the city has a generally-competent public transit infrastructure, making is possible to work in Manhattan without living in Manhattan or even in New York City and without hating your life. Of course, housing in the outer boroughs and in nearby cities is also expensive compared to, say, housing in a small university town somewhere in the Midwest. But this project is specifically about increasing the density of housing in Manhattan itself, which will hopefully let demand from people who can pay $3200/month shift away from the outer boroughs and nearby cities.
Is this proof for too much or too less government intervention? Or is the usual increase in price caused by the new micro-renters themselves, in that they are increasing attractiveness of the area?
I think it's most likely just that: We're bad savers and not being in the red at the end of the month will turn off the biggest behavioral signal for switching expenditure habits.
Overall, even with all of the city centre built up to 40 stories, you'll still see relatively high rent---the location is just too good to do business in; so people will bid it up.
The Economist had a whole section about cities a while ago. It was in the issue that also had http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val...
Allowing any part of the market to go upward in price puts upward pressure on the rest of the market because there's now more competition for whatever hasn't become out of reach.
Housing, transportation, education and a few others are necessities that pretty much everyone needs the same amount of. Until you saturate the entire market in an area with high end stuff to the point where the price of the high end stuff decreases dramatically the price of low end stuff will rise. It's really hard to saturate the housing market with expensive and new because no developer will build more nice expensive stuff when there's a larger profit margin building cheaper low end stuff that's been driven up in price by all the high end stuff.
I could not financially afford that micro apartment but I consider the people who live in it far worse off than me.
I take it this person doesn't cook. My first apartment (which was quite a bit smaller than this apparent) came with a two burner stove and no oven. With those two burners, a rice cooker and the small toaster style oven I bought, I quite comfortable cooked just about anything you'd care mention.
Imagine a "groovy millennial" Instagrammming a vegan cheesecake -- forever. I appreciate the job the NYT Real Estate section does. Without them (and Style) the newspaper probably would no longer exist. But articles like this are so devoid of reality that I understand why everyone thinks people are crazy to live in New York City.
This is a real apartment, really available to lease.
I know that New York salaries are typically higher to compensate, but I work remote for a company as a front-end designer/dev and make a good living without having to pay "big city" prices. I get the appeal of living in a big with though, Atlanta is near by and I love visiting; but I greatly prefer saving my money and/or spending it on things other than expensive rent.
And one of the things you learn here pretty quickly is that you don't REALLY need all that much space. My first apartment was about 300 sqft, and a third of it went entirely unused. My current studio is probably 450, and while I have a ton more stuff now than I did then, the amount of space is more than adequate. I wouldn't know what to do with 1600 sqft even with a spouse and kids! Oh, and costs about 2/3 as much as that apartment, in an arguably nicer neighborhood in Brooklyn. /shrug
We each have our own priorities for what we're willing to pay for.