You didn't ask me, but I'm going to chime in anyway with my personal experience. This is pretty Manhattan-centric, though the most desirable neighborhoods of Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, etc) aren't much cheaper.
If you're living alone and don't make six figures, odds are you'll be in a studio. I had a studio in Murray Hill (very convenient, nice neighborhood but neither super fancy nor particularly cool) that was just under 1800/month. This was a year or two ago. When I was looking at that, I saw a bunch of other things and it seemed like a liveable downtown (village, soho, east village) studio (walk-up building, small but big enough for one, within a 5-10 minute walk of the subway) ran in the 2000 range. I did see a TINY east village studio for 1350, though). I recently heard a story of someone finding a studio for 1400 or so in yorkville (east 80s/90s, east of third avenue. this was way over by york).
The farther uptown you go, and the farther east on the upper east side, the cheaper things are. I have a friend who had something under 1500 on 79th street, which is very cheap for the uws, but she didn't have a stove and just moved out to live in a nicer apartment further uptown with a roommate.
One-bedrooms tend to have nicer kitchens and bathrooms, but I don't know anyone who lives alone in them. Ours is kind of a steal, and most of the other couples I know who lived in one bedrooms in Manhattan got fed up and moved out when the rent got too high.
The other thing is most landlords will require that you make 40x the monthly rent in annual salary. If you don't hit that level, you can get a guarantor, but they need to make 80x rent and sometimes live in the tri-state area.
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Date: 2008-05-10 08:16 pm (UTC)If you're living alone and don't make six figures, odds are you'll be in a studio. I had a studio in Murray Hill (very convenient, nice neighborhood but neither super fancy nor particularly cool) that was just under 1800/month. This was a year or two ago. When I was looking at that, I saw a bunch of other things and it seemed like a liveable downtown (village, soho, east village) studio (walk-up building, small but big enough for one, within a 5-10 minute walk of the subway) ran in the 2000 range. I did see a TINY east village studio for 1350, though). I recently heard a story of someone finding a studio for 1400 or so in yorkville (east 80s/90s, east of third avenue. this was way over by york).
The farther uptown you go, and the farther east on the upper east side, the cheaper things are. I have a friend who had something under 1500 on 79th street, which is very cheap for the uws, but she didn't have a stove and just moved out to live in a nicer apartment further uptown with a roommate.
One-bedrooms tend to have nicer kitchens and bathrooms, but I don't know anyone who lives alone in them. Ours is kind of a steal, and most of the other couples I know who lived in one bedrooms in Manhattan got fed up and moved out when the rent got too high.
The other thing is most landlords will require that you make 40x the monthly rent in annual salary. If you don't hit that level, you can get a guarantor, but they need to make 80x rent and sometimes live in the tri-state area.