Stuck in the Middle
An article in this week’s Crain’s looks at how real estate prices and taxes are making the city increasingly unaffordable for the middle class. The rising cost of housing, in particular, has meant that families making between $80,000 and $150,000 a year are finding it more difficult than ever to make ends meet. Higher real…
An article in this week’s Crain’s looks at how real estate prices and taxes are making the city increasingly unaffordable for the middle class. The rising cost of housing, in particular, has meant that families making between $80,000 and $150,000 a year are finding it more difficult than ever to make ends meet. Higher real estate costs in Brooklyn, for example, have put the borough out of reach for many middle-income earners. A person profiled in the article who makes $60,000 a year looked all over Brooklyn before deciding to rent in Astoria. “Five years ago, [landlords] in Park Slope would have come to you,” he says. Interestingly, the story also notes that the city’s recent prosperity has contributed to a widespread sense of entitlement, thus making people believe that their incomes should stretch farther. “People used to squeeze kids into one bedroom; now everybody thinks every kid should get his own bedroom,” says Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Unaffordable NY: Tough Choices at $150,000 [Crain’s]
Photo by ultraclay!
Average starting salary in NYC for Professionals (Accountants, Finance, Engineers, Architects, etc. excluding wall-streeters) is around 50-60K. Within 3 years these people are making 75K+. Double that for a couple and tada – NYC real middle class. Add in Wall Street related fields, highly paid corporate managers, small business owners, sales people, insurance professionals, etc. and you have LITERALLY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE who can handily afford to live here.
Dream on if you think the cheap housing you are entitled is coming your way – It is not. Go back to school and join the real middle class.
There are plenty of affordable places out there in Bklyn for income 80-150K. There are charter schools, parochial (scaled for multiple children)and private if the $ makes sense vs. suburbs: commuting, taxes, abiliity to work and personal utility cost/benefit for factors that can only be described as highly personal.
So you didn’t buy during the boom. You also weren’t born a peasant in China or India (and your odds were greater for the latter). Make your own choices and move on Anger and bitterness solve nothing. If you took your 600K to an upscale suburb then you’d be complaining about the guy with the house on the hill and the narrow mindedness of some neighbors (who you’d better like because the the #’s are down).
I was born and raised in Brooklyn. My family owned a three family house in which we occupied a three bedroom 1 bath floor-through – crowded but just fine. We left that house in the white-flight sixties. It is now worth more than anyone in my family could afford to pay. So be it.
NYC is always changing, has been changing in radical ways since the very beginning. No one can predict the changes beyond a few years out no less stop them. The best you can do is grab a hold of the piece you can realistically afford and hold on to it for as long as you want to stay there and then trade it for the next place you want to and can afford to live.
Instead of moaning about what is out of reach, grab what you can and make change happen.
Hey 11:36 – Never said I was rich, quite the contrary. I am not a rich banker and agree they would not buy an $800K house in CH. But I am not an slouch city employee or sales associate at target either. No, in fact I am part of the real NYC middle class – Earning under 500K and able to afford an $800K home easily. Professionals like architects, accountants, financial analysts, executive assitants, store managers, sales people, etc. can easily afford a place like that – especially if they are a 2 income family.
Sorry you went to school for “Communications” or English Literature – Dont think you are middle class though.
Check the “Just Sold” Section:
PROSPECT PARK SOUTH $400,000
1409 Albemarle Road GMAP
2-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,000-sq.-ft. co-op
Doesnt this scream middle class?
I think we should hire Sho’Nuff (the Shogun of Harlem) to shut up The What.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogun_of_Harlem_(character)
“They can live the American dream somewhere else. Who says they should be living in an $800,000 home in Brooklyn”
Tell me then who should be living in an 800k house in Brooklyn…a rich person. HUH!! I’d like to see that. A rich banker living in an 800K townhouse in Crown Heights North. (1st he has to find the bargain, cause a house for that price is hard to find, even in that nabe), and I’d like to see him/her walk to the train and get on it and commute to the city.
You are so delusioned about what you are. You are no longer middle class. You think you’re rich. How sad for you.
“I’d agree if we were talking about historically expensive areas, such as the Upper East Side or Brooklyn Heights. But Bed Stuy? Crown Heights? The best neighborhoods are now defined as anything within a short walking distance to a subway station.”
Guest 9:45 AM, historically Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights were built to accomodate rich people and well to do families. Those brownstones and mansions were not built for poor black people. Black people acquired these properties only after whites fled to the suburbs to avoid living near African Americans.
This thread contains more dross than wisdom.
–NO, you have no right to live in NYC.
–The weak link in NYC housing is actually the school system, which, overall, is a disaster. We need vouchers, and reduced funding of the public schools to allow private schools to be less of a for-the-rich proposition. I heard Dennis Prager mention last week that the US spending $500 billion/year on public education?! G-d, what a disaster–and no where more so than NYC.
–We need a better transit system, subway, specifically, so that outer parts of the City (and for that matter, the more distant suburbs) are quicker to reach.
–Given the 5-10x higher property taxes, are the suburbs that much of a bargain?