Nina In New York: Pardon Me While I Go Sell All My Possessions
A lighthearted look at the news, events, culture and everyday life in New York.
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By Nina Pajak
A wise and peculiar man once said: The rent is too damn high.
Ain't it the truth, Jimmy McMillan. Ain't it the truth.
Yesterday, real estate firm Citi Habitats released a report which stated what many of us had already suspected: the rental rates in Manhattan have reached an all-time high, beating out even the prices back in the heady days before the bubble burst, before the recession hit and we all had jobs and the river ran pure and sweet as a forest brook and the trees bloomed year-round with gumdrop flowers and peppermint leaves.
The average Manhattan apartment rented for $3,418 in the month of March, which beats out the previous record by $24. This means everyone is now down a week's worth of iced coffees.
More: NYC's 16 Best Cups Of Iced Coffee
It also means we Manhattanites, already paying through the nose for the privilege of living in our beloved borough, are officially top-notch suckers. With overpriced apartments.
I guess this isn't really news to us, per se. I can easily look around my 700+ square foot apartment—which, of course, is "actually a really good size," as I say to out-of-town visitors—and tell you that we aren't exactly living a cost-efficient lifestyle. And watching countless House Hunters marathons has effectively taught me that living pretty much anywhere else in the country will get you way more space for way less money. ("We're looking for a 5,000 square foot house with six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a pool and a few acres of land and a finished basement and granite counter tops and a butler and a four car garage and we'd prefer not to go over our budget of $150,000.) Oh, sure.
The upside is that Citi Habitats doesn't predict these prices to continue to climb. And if it makes you feel any better, fellow Manhattanites, rents went up in Brooklyn, too. So harumph.
For some, this spike is a reason to think about buying. But for many of us, we're just stuck in this middle place where we feel like stupids for paying what we do to rent, but we can't quite afford to make the financial leap to own.
So all we can do is sit tight (really tight, because we all just had to move into 400 square foot studios), wait for the rush on sales to empty out the demand for rentals, and hope this number goes down a little before it goes back up again in that inexorable roller coaster that is New York real estate.
Most. Expensive. Roller Coaster. Ever.
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Dear Readers: While I am rarely at a loss for words, I'm always grateful for column ideas. Please feel free to e-mail me your suggestions.
Nina Pajak is a writer and publishing professional living with her husband on the Upper West Side.
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