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Comment by ArtWomb | Hacker News Reader

It's exciting. Google has been talking about expanding its presence forever. At least since purchasing the Chelsea Market complex. The Youtube studio is an amazing space. As is the AWS Loft downtown. Cornell Tech will have a new campus on Roosevelt Island. And Brooklyn has its New Lab / Navy Yards that is almost a tech city unto itself. It feels like there's community. And a multitude of events every day and night. With rents stabilizing, and burgeoning FinTech and AI momentum, I just think everyone at some point in their lives should consider a stint in the city ;)

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The nice thing about NYC in comparison to the Bay Area is that we're not afraid of building more housing here, so supply increases every year and has a dampening effect on rent increases. Also, mass transit is much better, so if you live even 30 minutes away on a subway line the rents will be much lower. If you're willing to commute an hour each way (which is still less than a lot of people who drive every day on I-101 put up with) then rents are a fraction of what they are in nice areas of Manhattan, or the Bay Area for that matter.

Though personally I don't like relying on the subway (which increasingly has problems these days), hence I live in biking distance.

> and has a dampening effect on rent increase

Is that really true? I don't know if this data is accurate but googling "average rent new york city" vs "average rent san francisco" brings up these 2 results as the first hits. They look almost identical. The site claims average rent for NYC is $3634 vs SF at $3735. It also claims prices increased in NYC by 9.46% over last year vs SF at 0.62%

https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren...

https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-new-york-rent-tre...

One thing, not immediately clear from those averages, is that apartments in Manhattan tend to be larger than those in SF.

If you look at the breakdown by bedroom count:

1BR: SF -> $3303 | NY -> $2939

2BR: SF -> $4481 | NY -> $3752

This makes clear that NY inventory is biased towards larger units, which makes comparisons of overall averages deceptive.

Do you have any data to support this? I am not being argumentative, I just found that from personal experience the opposite was true- that total rent tended to be higher in SF, but the apartments tended to be larger, at least than those in Manhattan. It seemed to me that SF was slightly cheaper per sq ft, with many more houses having access to outdoor space.

The closest I could find in terms of data was this site- https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/us-average-apart... which compares SF to all of NYC, not Manhattan. The studios are somewhat bigger, the 1BRs slightly smaller, and the 2BRs are on average slightly larger- but the difference is very small.

I'm going just by the bedroom counts listed on that website. It's possible that those numbers are also deceptive because square footage per bedroom is sufficiently different. I was mainly remarking that the breakdown seems to indicate that NY inventory is biased towards 2BR apartments while SF inventory is biased towards 1BR. This is based merely on the fact that the SF overall average is much closer to the SF 1BR average while the NY overall average is much closer to the NY 2BR average.

Price per square foot would shed more light on this, but I don't know of a reliable (free) source of that data.

I'm a tech worker in NYC and none of my firends (except one idiot) pays more than 2500 for their studio apartment within Manhattan. I share a super fancy apartment in a hirise in Brooklyn and pay less than 2K. If you're okay living in Queens you can get a 2BR with less than 1h commute. And this is not even talking about distant Brooklyn, Bronx or jersey (also less tax)

If you count the opportunity cost of the time, stress, and money you spend using NJTransit to commute into Manhattan, and especially if you’re commuting further into other boroughs, the tax savings of NJ turn into losses.

100% Agree. It's very easy to underestimate the additional pain of commuting from NJ (unless you are talking about Jersey City or Hoboken), especially if you own a home and are paying NJ property taxes.

Lots of people live in Jersey City and take the PATH, which is a faster, cheaper, and more reliable commute than NJT. They still avoid NYC city tax and get cheaper and nicer apartments though.

Yes, Hobo/JC if you're near the Path station is an exception. But it doesn't apply to many people commuting into NYC.

There's other ways into NYC from NJ that aren't the train. There are many ferry options along the hudson, and nothern shore area has a commuter ferry that is 40 minutes to Wall St.

I live in NJ, and from 2006-2010 worked in WFC near Wall Street...While the ferry option is nice and pleasant, it used to cost about 2.5~3 times MORE expensive than the PATH train (the "subway' that connects both sides of the Hudson). Also, the duration of the commute gets cut down only about 1.5~2 minutes (as compared to when the PATH is running without delays). Overall, not really sustainable - neither in time nor money. Though, as a tourist, yeah, the ferry is nice for its views of the skyline. ;-)

I've used the ferry a handful of times to take my bike in, but it definitely caters to a very specific clientele. It's simply not worth it unless you live right there or work right where it lets off.

Yes, the strip of land from Jersey City to Edgewater is an exception in terms of travel time, but that doesn't apply to many NJ to NYC commuters.

You can also get a 2BR less than one hour's commute away from San Francisco for under $2000 / month.

A transit commute?

Yes, my commute from South Hayward to Embarcadero station in SF was 45 minutes, I used BART (obviously), and rent was under $2000.

Is it possible to do this without a car, though? Because in NYC you don't need a car even to live an hour away on transit, and a car is a pretty substantial monthly expense.

Yes, it's possible to do it without a car. See my cousin comment.

I'm not just referring to the commute though, I mean is the neighborhood you're living in itself built around not requiring a car? I live in a dense part of Manhattan where the majority of people don't own vehicles and most needs can be fulfilled simply by walking a few blocks; is this true of South Hayward?

None of the tech jobs are in San Francisco. Unlike most cities, people live in SF/Oakland and commute to the suburbs in Mountain View and Palo Alto to work, and that commute is closer to two hours door to door.

where?

Hayward.

Wow, I looked it up and you're right. Thanks for the info.

What's living in Hayward like?

It seemed quietly beautiful to me. Very nice scenery and otherwise typically suburban? The local hispanic population is large; I walked up into the hills once and found an impressive park, filled with people none of whom were speaking English.

Those stats about NYC are, quite frankly, incorrect. I have no idea where they got that garbage data from, but it's garbage. Housing stock was massively added to over the past year and the market has actually gotten friendlier to renters, with many buildings offering one month free rent to entice renters.

You can see some more accurate stats here: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/24/16925172/nyc-rent-2017-decre...

The difference is a reasonable transit ride puts you in the radius of a staggeringly large amount of housing stock comparatively in NYC.

But, go to the SF burbs and try to find high rises... :/

Both NYC and SF are rent controlled areas. Rent control is cancer that punishes younger and newer inhabitants while making rent cheap for the rich. In fact, NYC has more vacant apartments than homeless people.

Rent control is much less of a thing in NYC than it is in SF. There are only 27k rent controlled apartments in all of NYC (with its >8M population). More info here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/rentguidelinesboard/resources/rent...

There are plenty of rent stabilized apartments in NYC, but that's a much different and weaker thing, and isn't comparable to rent control in SF.

If NYC is currently at $3634 then yes, NYC has done much better than SF.

I remember getting out of college in 2005, hearing about the $3000+ 1BR apartments in NYC, and thinking "Why the hell would anyone want to move to NYC?" (I was living with my parents in Boston at the time, but looked at moving out and would've paid $650 with roommates or about $1100 for a 1BR in that city.) My now-wife was living in SF that same year and paid $1200 in rent.

The huge increases in SF rent happened mostly from 2010-2015. I paid $1400/month for a 1BR in 2009-2010 (Mountain View, not SF, but SF was still < $2000 at the time). By 2014 it was basically impossible to find something < $3000 in any transit-accessible part of the city, and apparently it's leveled off since.

You can live in many places that are not New York City and have a reasonably timely public transit commute into it.

New York City is huge though. To live in a place that isn’t NYC while still in state means Yonkers or White Plains. Reasonable commute is like an hour, maybe more.

Eh, you can get to dense suburbia in about 45 minutes, sparse suburbia in like 1 hour, and if you're willing to commute 90 minutes, maybe two hours, you're out in what city slickers would call "rural".

Also don't forget Long Island, the Other In State.

(I'm one of the idiots who commutes ~2 hours from near Poughkeepsie, which is (a) still on commuter rail [the super-express Hudson line train takes ~90 minutes, plus the time to get to & from it] and (b) where half of the food you find in NYC farmer's markets comes from. I kinda like it.)

I tried commuting from Poughkeepsie (well, that odd stop one stop south) during the dotcom 90s and it nearly killed me. The train was fine, but that final 30 minutes on the subway downtown just pushed it over the edge. Gave up after six months. If you can manage it and keep to sane working hours (I was working 9:30 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. routinely) keep doing it.

Yeah, I mostly agree; I did Metro North for a couple of years before switching to Amtrak. It's less flexible and a little more expensive than Metro North, but the train is usually faster and it drops you off by Penn Station which is a pleasant walk to the Google office (and like 5 minutes by subway if you don't feel like a pleasant walk).

My personal limit is 12-13 hours out of the house each day; more than that and it burns me out fast. It definitely wouldn't work for me with an employer who was less flexible about when the work day starts or who had expectations of large numbers of hours spent with butt in chair.

I know from my stint on Crouton on Hudson, but its still a pain. You don't truly live in the city, you just visit it from time to time.

You're definitely not living in the city and it's certainly not for everyone.

For me, I didn't really take advantage of the city - I like occasionally went to a museum or went out to eat but I mostly just sat on the couch watching TV and surfing the internet. So I moved north and got myself forty acres of tree-covered Bath-Nassau soil with rocky outcroppings. Now my free time is filled with rennovating a 200 year old vernacular house, turning my land into a proper hobby farm, and going to various kitschy festivals and hiking trails with my family. My commute is, frankly, the most relaxing part of my week, where I can sit quietly for 90 minutes and read a book or take a nap or post WoT conspiracy theories on Reddit.

It may not be for everyone, but it's amazing to me that I can have this lifestyle while also commuting to a regular old desk job in the largest city in the country. (It's also amazing to me that I'm part of a multi-century tradition of both commuting to the city from rural upstate and of gentleman farmers coming upstate from the city.)

The burbs are wsy better too. You can still find a great family home in a good school district within a reasonable commute on NJ transit, lirr, or metro north, well under a million.

I actually just came back from a week-long trip to NYC where I stayed with my cousin in Harrison (Westchester) and took Metro-North into and out of the city every day I was there. I had a lot of fun, but I would never ever want to actually commute like that day in and day out.

The train ride from Harrison to Grand Central alone is somewhere around 45 minutes. And unless you work right at Grand Central, you're looking at rushing to make connecting trains. Doing this for a week while exploring the city was fine, but the idea of having to do this every single day until I retire just to make a living would make me want to blow my brains out.

I don't know how my cousin does it. She works in the financial district and takes a 6am train into the city every day. When she gets home, she has just enough time to put her kids to bed before passing out. Now I understand why her husband has a WFH job.

And about that "great family home" thing... the housing stock is so old that every house, even the nice ones, is going to be a fixer-upper. Not long before I got there, they had a plumbing joint break in one of the upstairs bathrooms. Within a few minutes, it wrecked the fixtures in that bathroom, obliterated the ceiling of the kitchen it was above, and did a number on the kitchen counters.

I'm also generally not a fan of how the suburbs are laid out either. Houses are spaced so far apart that it feels like you're living in the country even though you're close to the city (I went trick-or-treating with their kids, and I had to force myself to not brag that my hauls when I was their age were twice as big as theirs because I got to visit twice as many houses in the same amount of time :), and the street layout is twisty nonsense where even the major roads only have two lanes.

No thank you.

I'll gladly visit NYC again (and I'm sad my trip was only one week and not two), but I never want to live there. I'm happy living in Dallas, though I'm considering a move to Las Vegas for political reasons. Either way, both of those are polar opposites of the NYC suburbs.

Agreed, being high income and living in Manhattan or nice parts of Brooklyn is great, but other than that, I find the quality of life to be much better in many other cities.

I feel like the suburbs in NJ within reasonable commuting distance (door to door in 45 min max reliably) offer all the drawbacks of the city with none of the benefits of the suburb. You get a little more space, but not enough. A little less traffic, but still a lot of traffic. No decent gyms or parks, unless you like paying out the nose. And super high and ever increasing taxes. And I think even a 45 min door to door commute is too much, but add on the system’s unreliable-ness, I would find it unacceptable to commute from Jersey.

I don’t know much about NJ. I lived in Westchester and it was great. Not sprawling exurbs by any means, but that’s a good thing. You can live in Rye or Pehlam and walk or bike to the Metro North station. MNR is very reliable, runs frequently at rush hour, and will get you downtown in 30-40 flat.

Yes, NJ Transit has to borrow Amtrak's tunnel and it frequently has problems, as does NJ Transit's stuff. MTA/NY infrastructure is much better, but still, I don't see how one can get from Rye or Pehlam to downtown in 40 min.

https://goo.gl/maps/DYvaWBSLFcP2 1h15m from Rye train station to Fulton subway station on a Tue morning

https://goo.gl/maps/TdQN5FhWF132 55m from Pelham station to Fulton subway.

So door to door, you're still looking at 70 min to 90 min commute one way, with the added stress of possibly dealing with train delays. I wouldn't be able to do that more than a couple years.

I don’t know why anyone would work near Fulton station. I worked in midtown and it was 34 minutes on the Metro North followed by a 5 minute walk.

I put Fulton since your comment stated it would take 30 to 40 min to get to downtown.

I meant midtown, which in Manhattan is the core business district.

There's a lot of hyperbole in here, especially about parks and gyms. There's plenty of parks all over NJ that offer different options from hiking, biking, to kayaking. Gyms are a plenty and it's weird to even say you'd pay more for them when places like Equinox or Chelsea Piers are absurd in price. And go ask any person commuting from Brooklyn right now how there commutes are going to get into Midtown Manhattan, they can be 30-45 minutes with current state of the MTA.

I know there are, but then the door to door commute is unacceptable per my standards. And the further from NY Penn Station you are, the more variance you are subject to, making commutes even longer.

My point is, if you want a door to door commute of sub 45 min, consistently, then you would need to be in Hoboken/Jersey City/Secaucus/Weehawken/etc. That whole Hudson County corridor doesn't offer much in the way of decent gyms (swimming pools, racquetball/squash courts, basketball, etc), and neither does it have any decent hiking. People don't really have yards there either.

If you move out of that circle, you do start getting some amenities, but your commute starts looking like 45 to 60+min, and you have to park your car at the train station or get dropped off, etc. It's all personal preference, but for me, I would want all the benefits of owning a car, or all the benefits of not needing to own a car. Living in NJ and working in NYC seems like compromising on both.

The question is: what is your point of comparison? What is the sub-million housing market look like within 45 minutes of SF, or DC for that matter?

I'm not familiar with DC, but SF is just as bad if not worse. My original goal was to point out that commuting from NJ isn't a reasonable commute, in my opinion.

Depends on where you are. I have a pretty great backyard and an excellent gym I pay $50/month for.

when it doesn't smell like urine and I don't see dead homeless people next to millionaire bankers, I'll consider it

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