Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty
Most New Yorkers earn less than $100,000 a year — the average gross annual salary in 2023 was $88,674, per the New York State Department of Labor — but it’s becoming increasingly clear that even those pulling in a good chunk more can’t afford to live here. A person making an average of $135,000 a year can only sort of swing the rent on a studio or one-bedroom anymore, according to a new report from StreetEasy. (The study focuses on tech workers in the city — pointing out that they can only manage a third of rental listings if the goal is to pay no more than 30 percent of their income on rent — but the salary is the salary.). For those earning the entry-level tech salary of $75,000, meanwhile, there’s pretty much nothing: In Manhattan, just 0.6 percent of studios and one-bedrooms are affordable to someone making that wage. The odds are hardly better in Brooklyn and Queens: Just 2.5 percent and 3.6 percent of studios and one-beds are within range, respectively. Even in the Bronx, it’s 14.4 percent.
Sometimes, everything is so expensive in New York that you don’t know whether to feel hopeless or smug about the fact that even people making a lot more money than you still can’t afford to live here. But, as the report highlights, if even tech workers can’t make rent, everyone else is really screwed. Last year, the city’s median rent hit $3,475, up nearly 10 percent from the year before — and affordable only to those making $139,000 and up. And while people have been rolling their eyes at average rents forever — during my years as a real-estate reporter, I have received countless exasperated comments that people should stop crying about how high the rent is and move to Queens — the reality is that they did and now Queens is nearly as expensive as Brooklyn, which is nearly as expensive as Manhattan. As the StreetEasy report highlights, it’s not that there aren’t some cheaper apartments on the market, but they’re few and far between.
All of which means most New Yorkers have to fight over a vanishingly small number of affordable apartments. Essential workers — those in health-care support, food, and transportation, for example, were paid average wages under $70,000 last year and can afford just one percent of apartments on the market, according to StreetEasy. Rents are so high that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to afford living with roommates, let alone by themselves. This year, the minimum wage went up to $16 per hour — or $33,280 per year — which comfortably covers $832 a month in rent. But it’s rare these days to find apartments with bedrooms that rent for under $1,000.
What happens when people can’t afford the rent? They pay more than they should — one in five New Yorkers now spends more than 50 percent of their income on rent. Not only does it make their lives financially precarious — it’s not only impossible to save when you spend that much, but an unexpected expense can derail everything — there’s just so high that percentage can go, leaving people to seek out other solutions, like sharing bedrooms in shared apartments. Or renting illegal, potentially dangerous spaces. Or leaving New York altogether.
Rents aren’t going down, either. While they plateaued, even dipped a little last summer and fall, they’re now climbing again. (The Manhattan median rent last month — $4,250 — was the highest for April on record, according to Douglas Elliman.) Late last year, everyone was optimistic that the rental weirdness that set in during the pandemic might finally disappear, especially as lower interest rates were expected to push more renters into the buyer’s market, freeing up apartments for everyone else. But interest rates have remained high, the sales market sluggish, and the rental market punishingly expensive.
So who can afford the rent? People who make over $160,000 a year, pretty much — lawyers ($182,000 average) and people in management ($197,000 average) have more than half of all apartments to pick from. The millionaires are also doing well, and now New York has more of them than any other city in the world.
