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Comment by msukkarieh | Hacker News Reader

I've never lived in NYC - are median studio apts in West Village really $6k? Website looks awesome but I'm hoping that the data isn't true

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> I've never lived in NYC - are median studio apts in West Village really $6k? Website looks awesome but I'm hoping that the data isn't true

The West Village is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. In around 2010, it was the most expensive zip code in the country.

That's due to a combination of: old buildings, very little new construction, extremely gentrified neighborhood, and NYU eating up all of the real estate in the neighborhood.

That said, the map is slightly mislabeled: what's labeled as the West Village is actually Greenwich Village, and the West Village is a subset of that. This map labels places as far east as Astor Place as the West Village, which is not correct.

Saw this too and to reinforce your point about the West Village the conflation of Greenwich with West is actually decreasing the actual severity of the rents in the West Village (since Greenwich Village, on average, is cheaper).

Not sure where creator is getting their neighborhood data from, but if you're reading this a) great job and b) if you can find a more accurate neighborhood source the utility and credibility of what you've created will go up (that's not a knock, but if New Yorkers love one thing it's knowing their city and so as soon as they see data/info that doesn't match the reality on the ground they might bail before giving this a chance).

As a relatively poor student, I actually lived in the West Village for a summer internship in the mid-80s in an NYU law school dorm. Pretty cool place to be.

That is completely true, unfortunately. There are a lot of people in NY. All the demand components — longevity/natural increase, wages, net migration — are increasing and the supply is in stasis, so the price has to rise. Under these conditions you should expect surprisingly non-linear behavior of the market price.

Housing in Greenwich Village (the broader area including the West Village) has become outrageous in recent decades. A significant reason, but not the only reason, is because the main NYU campus is located in the middle of the small area and doesn't provide nearly enough housing (only ~20%) for the on-campus enrollment.

NYU's on-campus enrollment is also roughly 50% foreign students. I don't have any data about it, but just from experience I've suspected that foreign students are willing and able to pay higher prices for housing.

NYC is deceptive. It's dense, so you don't realize you're crossing a city's worth of people in a 10 minute walk. Median studios in Beverly hills being $6k wouldn't surprise anyone. The Tribeca-Greenwich-West village-Chelsea stretch effectively the same.

Walk a few minutes north from there, and you'll reach hell's kitchen. Much much cheaper.

Is it these days? It's gentrified a lot. Not staying there on my next trip, in part because I sort of fell out of love with the place I was accustomed to staying. But I've stayed around 10th and 42nd a lot.

Ever since sex and the city of the 90s, rent in NYC has skyrocketed more than anywhere else in the world. $6k is cheap. There’s places that are $20k…

(no correlation with the show, just ironic)

Not sure why you are dating it there. For one thing, housing prices in NY fell from 2007-2012 so it hasn't been monotonic since the 90s to today. Secondly, housing costs in NY tripled from 1980-1988, which is the same ratio as 2000-2025, but in a third the time.

I know, I’m joking about the tv series having anything to do with it. In reality, it’s because NYC is a city that never sleeps, financial markets call home, immigrants land there, it’s a city of opportunity and the rents reflect that. It’s been going up and up since 1900s.

My tongue in cheek joke was because most of the audience here doesn’t really know NYC history (they should, it’s fascinating) and doesn’t understand that a young quant hedge fund person has no problems paying $10k/mo in rent for a shoebox they’ll never be in. Just to have the NYC address, to be able to work within NYC. Any sane person would look towards Staten Island or Jersey, but even then the rent prices along the transit lines are double what’s available further out.

But I could be wrong and all the history buffs will rebuke me with facts about how commissioners in the 50s did this or that, or that some policy in the 70s created it.

>Secondly, housing costs in NY tripled from 1980-1988

Doesn't this correlate with the steep drop in crime around that same time period?

No, crime rose dramatically to a peak in 1990. Housing costs in NYC were stable throughout the 1990s while crime fell by 90%. Pretty much the opposite of what you just suggested.

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