Hacker News Reader

Comment by projectramo | Hacker News Reader

Tired of the expense of the Bay Area, companies are now uncovering small, cheap gems that no one knew about like NYC.

I know you're being sarcastic, but as someone who lived in NYC and California there is not even a comparison on how better is NYC when it comes to the amount of options you get to flexibly spend your money and smartly extend your paycheck. All this while still living in one of the boroughs.

I lived for a year in Manhattan with a $50K salary. I wasn't living like a king at all and definitely not saving money, but still managed to have a lifestyle that I would consider comfortable and healthy. This was 2015.

Now, compare that to San Francisco. $50K it's basically one level above homelessness.

SF really has no low end on anything. There's no $1 pizza slice when you really need a cheap meal and there's nowhere cheap to live without a punishing commute.

The high end of NY is also much higher than SF. NY is where the first $100M apartment is.

NY is as expensive on average but it's an average of a much wider and range.

> NY is where the first $100M apartment is.

Most things being sold for more than 20M are probably being sold for money laundering purposes. A more fair comparison would be looking at only apartments that people actually live in full time; a pied-à-terre isn’t really part of basic living expenses.

There's an In-N-Out on the north side of SF and Chinatown has a ton of cheap eating options. You can eat for cheap in either city.

"on the north side of SF" is really "over in Fisherman's Wharf", which is a notorious tourist trap that's not convenient to get to in the slightest. It can't be compared to a pizza slice joint or falafel or what have you.

Chinatown, yes.

Just one in-n-out?

Yeah SF has only one In-N-Out and it's more expensive and crowded than any other location I've seen.

SF strongly limits fast food (which I find annoying). My suburb home town had more McDonald's locations than SF does.

There’s this thing, called a grocery store.

I’ve even heard there is multiple of those in the city !

As someone who currently lives in NYC, I personally prefer it to San Francisco, but I wouldn't call it better without comparison. A lot of the cheap rent is a longer commute away-- like is the case with SF.

In the case of Google, they have shuttles in California, and I would personally take a shuttle over the subway any day.

I'm not living in the cheapest apartment I could find (tried that before and regretted it twice, both because it wasn't that cheap, and because it was horrible), and as far as I've researched I'd pay about the same as I would in San Francisco.

> I would personally take a shuttle over the subway any day.

If you're crossing any bridges or tunnels, a 15 minute train ride could easily be 45 minutes in a shuttle or car.

Took that shuttle for 2 years. It's nice but ... it's still a bus. There's no nice way to be on a bus for 3hr a day. I'd much prefer the subway, which is much faster.

I'm pretty sure they have shuttles in NYC too.

I live in Boston and my company has shuttles to the suburbs as well. All of the Big4 do.

No, Google does not have shuttles in NYC. There is no need for them (the Port Authority building literally stands on top of a subway station) and it would be nearly impossible to run them (even if you ignore the traffic, there isn't any space next to the building to legally park a shuttle).

Interesting. Even my old internship had shuttle buses in NYC.

The average Manhanttan apartment is ~3.5k a month. I'd say you likely got lucky if you lived comfortable on a 50k salary.

People always forget that Manhattan goes all the way up into the 200s of streets. You can live in Manhattan on pretty much any budget imaginable. Whether you should is another question.

The East Village also goes all the way out to Avenue D, and the West Side, to 12th Avenue. These are transit deserts relative to the rest of the island, and priced accordingly.

Right. Yet all of SF is a transit desert relative to Manhattan and is still priced about the same.

Hell, I managed Manhattan for three years on <30K during grad school with money leftover to take trips here and there and party a bit on the weekends. I wasn’t living like a king, but it’s 100% doable. Get a roommate in Washington heights near the A, be smart about your grocery purchases, get an unlimited metro card and don’t take cabs or Uber.

I never know why people trot these prices out. Literally nobody I know actually pays 3.5k a month for rent, and a majority of my friends are in the software field in one way or another.

The most that anyone pays is like 1.8k

If you want to live without roommates (you have a family, or you just like living alone), you're probably paying more than 1,800/mo.

1,800 will get you a nice 2BR if you're willing to accept a 45 min commute. Even in nicer neighborhoods, e.g. a 2BR in Riverdale is 2,000 - 2,400.

The Riverdale is not manhattan...but yes you're correct.

Yeah it's basically the suburbs, but a 10 min walk from the subway. And within the last two years there are actually lots of good restaurants in the area now.

And/or you have a lease started after 2016/17.

Well yes, if you don't want to make basic concessions, you have to pay more money.

I find generally fiscal rationality trumps not having a roommate.

Middle class professionals can normally afford their own places with ~30 minute commutes.

If I need a roommate to make things work financially, I’m in the wrong job or the wrong city.

Basic concessions like not having a family? People aren't 25 their entire life.

I moved to NYC in March. I pay more than 3.5k a month for rent.

The reason for that is that places with a reasonable commute time to and from flatiron are really terrible below ~3k, by the standards of most places which are not NYC or SF.

I worked remotely for more than two years before that, so my tolerance for commute was quite low (my NYC commute is about 20 minutes on average, and when I first moved here, it was sooo long), and I was coming from a place where ~1K/mo can get you 3000 sq ft plus a basement and over half an acre.

It depends on what you're looking for.

If you would like a package room, that's extra. In unit washer dryer, that's extra. Doorman - extra. Reasonable commute - extra. AC - extra.

Even more money if you want to live in a fashionable neigborhood (Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen) or spitting distance from a university (Washington Square, Union Square, Morningside Heights) or both (St. Mark's)

> Literally nobody I know actually pays 3.5k a month for rent

Thats because rent numbers are based on the 1.34% rental vacancy supply on the market at that point in time, self-reported by landlords.

People very frequently move in with people and other arrangements. So less than half or even 1/4th of new renters any given year actually pay the "market rent".

I pay $2.6k a month in rent. I have friends that pay $3.1k+ in New York and Boston and Seattle (Seattle is a bit of a different story but nonetheless).

I was talking to a guy the other day living in a sub400 sqft place in lower manhattan in a non-luxury unit paying $2.5k.

All the cool kids live in Brooklyn or Queens.

I was just wondering - how difficult is it to commute by bike in from e.g. Brooklyn? NYC seems pretty flat, so biking could get you there quicker than by car if there's a lot of traffic.

I commuted for years from Queens and Brooklyn to Wall St. NYC is mostly flat, good to commute during the nicer months.

Meanwhile, hackers live in Jersey

Well, if it’s not too personal: what was your rent, where, and for how much space in the two cities?

My rent in NYC was $1500 with utilities included. I was renting one bedroom in a 2 bedrooms apartment in 75th street.

Only downside is that it was a semi-basement (Those apartments with tiny windows that are the same height of the street level---Probably a huge fire hazard). The plus was that I lived three blocks away from Central Park.

Some people said that I was lucky to find that place, but in my search I saw similar places that ranged between 1400 without utilities to 2000 in Upper East, some areas of Midtown and East Village. I even saw one guy renting a room for 700 in Upper West.

So yes, I was probably lucky to find that place, but not extremely lucky.

With roommates you can definitely have 1500 of rent in SF in « desirable » neighborhoods.

I did the research when interviewing for a job in NYC.

What would cost ~3500 in SF was more like 1500-2000.

NYC has much better transit - I could commute in from Park Slope to Manhattan and have a 1500 studio which would have been much much more expensive if I say, commuted from Mission to Civic center on BART.

It is significantly cheaper if you don't live in Manhattan, and transit allows that

Sure, but you could commute from Millbrae to Civic Center in the same time as Park slope to manhattan (depending on the exact stop obviously), and that's uhh, cheaper, than Mission.

And living in Park Slope is much nicer than living in Millbrae, at least if you're looking for an urban lifestyle with walkable amenities. New York City just has that everywhere, for miles and miles.

Also the parts of Millbrae that rival Park Slope in cost are not walkable to the subway (well technically walkable but quite a walk) vs the places I was looking at were a 5-10 min walk to the subway station.

Trains in NYC come much more often, later, and frankly Millbrae is no Park Slope ;)

Yea but transit in the Bay shuts down hella early. Getting to Park Slope at 2am from Manhattan is significantly easier (and safer) than Millbrae (or Oakland or wherever) from San Francisco.

Just for perspective Google also is planning to add ~50k employees in the Bay Area. They have been on a massive real estate buying spree here

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Google-s-Bay-Ar...

Also Seattle. Building a big new office near all the Amazon ones, as well as expanding their existing Seattle sites.

As all of the comments below are comparing the San Francisco Bay Area with New York City in terms of real estate, transit time, etc. it's worth noting the stark differences between the two.

The Bay Area is of size 6,000-10,000 sq. mi. with a population of 7.7-8.8 million people[1]. NYC is of size 302 sq. mi. (yes, really! That's 20x-50x smaller) with a population of 8.1-8.6 million people[2]. Perhaps it's easy to underestimate just how much of a big world city NYC is and how varied its people and industries are compared to what they might be used to on the west coast.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City

Why are you comparing the SF bay area to the city limits of New York? Better would be to compare SF bay area to New York Metro Area, which is far bigger than the SF bay area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

I originally had the same reaction as you, but reading the parent's comment charitably I believe he's getting at "the population of the entire Bay Area is actually comparable to the population of just NYC proper with it's much tinier (relatively) area)."

In other words, some people tend to think of NYC as "huge major East Coast city" and SF as "huge major West Coast city", but the sheer enormous density of NYC makes it actually on a whole other level than SF.

Even coming from the Midwest SF feels like a midsize city. I've visited SF, I considered doing the SF software dev thing, but SF just feels like if Cincinnati developed a tech sector.

Chicago's urban population is 8.66m, and the urban area is 2,200 sq miles. I feel like I'm in a city here. When I go to West Coast cities I feel like I'm in a giant (sometimes quaint and charming) suburb. There's no density.

SF is a little under 50 square miles with a population of around 900,000

Reply on news.ycombinator.com