MANHATTAN — If you’re planning to live alone and rent a one-bedroom in Manhattan, you’ll have to earn roughly $130,800 a year.
That’s 40 times the amount of September’s median monthly asking rent, which was a record $3,271, according to real estate search engine Streeteasy. Many landlords require tenants earn 40 times the rent in order to sign a lease.
Those looking in Brooklyn have to be high earners, too: median asking rents for one-bedrooms were $2,200 a month, meaning someone would have to earn $88,000 a year to pay that.
Lynn, a 35-year-old graphic designer, moved to the city 13 years ago, first to Bushwick, then to Boerum Hill, Park Slope, and Carroll Gardens, always living with friends or boyfriends.
After a recent break-up, she decided to pursue her dream to live alone for the first time, preferably in a one-bedroom for under $1,500 a month.
“I’ve been seeing all the crappy places New York has to offer,” said Lynn, who requested DNAinfo use only her middle name. Two studios she looked at in her price range around the Clinton Hill/Bedford-Stuyvesant border both had two-burner hot plates above a beer fridge.
“I’m 35,” she said. “I don’t think I could honestly live with a hot plate and feel like I’m doing OK.”
More than half of the city’s population are single New Yorkers, according to Census data; 32 percent of the city’s households are made up of New Yorkers who live alone,Census figures show. And while many developers are focusing the microsuite model on millennials, single households skew older.
Read the full article here: http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20151110/upper-west-side/you-need-earn-130k-rent-1-bedroom-by-yourself-manhattan
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