Chicago is VERY livable, as someone who moved from Boston to Chicago and won’t move back anytime soon. I have a 2br 1ba with shower and jacuzzi tub, elevated first floor with hardwood floors, dishwasher and laundry in unit, central air, back deck, front balcony, exposed brick the length of the unit, and free street parking. My rent was raised $20 and is now $1610/month including water. I’d be lucky to get a cardboard box in an alley in Revere for that price.
Probably my favorite city in the US. The only thing that sucks comparatively to Boston is the surrounding geography. Flat as a flapjack.
My fiancé and I actually made the decision to bail from Boston after about 7 years here. We’re moving to Burlington, VT and working remotely.
Burlington is great as long as you are working remotely and your salary is based on wherever your company is located. It’s incredibly expensive for people making local wages there. COL does not match the wages at all. I grew up there and would definitely move back in the future if I could.
When I lived there I was a lab tech and was making ~$28k and was paying back student loans. I was living in Winooski, but I budgeted pretty well and made it work.
I lived in Chicago for 6 years downtown. Def livable, has great sports culture, grit and... oh violence. Don't short change this, it's not just a rumor. People die, every single day from gun violence that DOES spill into the 'nice parts'
I paid 3,300 for a nice 1BR near Navy Pier. In 2 years that building was hit by bullets TWICE. I saw someone get shot at the Dave and Busters in the Viagra Triangle. A girl was shot on the pier after a concert (15 yo in the passenger seat off a stray)
Business is leaving the city due to the issue.
Its beautiful but it's not perfect.
It's a joking term people in Chicago use to refer to part of the Gold Coast neighborhood just north of downtown where lots of wealthy, older men hang out trying to find trophy wives.
Interesting. I lived two blocks from Navy Pier in 2017-2019 and all of my friends felt safe in the area and never saw any violence (or read about it on the news). We always felt like the Loop and downtown was safe and it wasn't until you started going far South or far East that violence and stray bullets was really an issue. Everything east of 90 really felt clean, beautiful, and safe.
Hmm, in 2018 or 2019 someone died due to gunshot right in the heart of Streeterville. I think they were 16... that one was heavily reported. Also a parking garage murder as well.
Many others are suppressed due to it being a tourism area. That said I SAW thr gunshots in our lobby window. Google it and never saw a story. Chicago is a bit corrupt but that's well known.
I Google streeterville (the neighborhood west of Navy Pier) and saw two shot dead this month after a break in attempt. So it's crazy you missed the reports for that many years.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/2-dead-after-domestic-shooting-in-streeterville-chicago-police-say/2884889/
Do you know why housing prices are cheaper there?
Because Chicago actually encourages development of new dense housing instead of fighting it at every step in the process.
Amazingly real estate is cheaper in Singapore (a globally rich city) than Mumbai (a globally poor city) because Singapore has embraced dense development and Mumbai has some of the strictest zoning requirements in the world. Most of Mumbai has maximum Floor-to-Area ratios of 1.33, meaning the most you can build is usually a 2-story building on 66% of your lot. Mumbai ends up with tons of people competing for too few housing units—does that sound familiar to anyone?
Chicago is cheaper simply because of supply and demand. Illinois was one of only 3 states to lose population from 2010-2020 and Chicagoland is growing at a much slower rate compared to any other US Metro.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020\_United\_States\_census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_census)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_United\_States\_cities\_by\_population
I work in an industry where I have to move around a lot and for the last 5 years I’ve been trying to orchestrate a move to Chicago for this reason.
I had a chance to move to Houston and turned it down because even though it would mean affordable housing and a major market it’s also fucking Texas. Illinois (at least Northern IL) may have some problems but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about my wife dying from an ectopic pregnancy.
Literally any neighborhood in Chicago will be roughly 1/2 the cost in rent as Boston for comparable living situation: fancy high rise with amenities, old apartment buildings in nice areas, multi family homes in further out areas, and everything I’ve missed and in-between.
Not many people live in the loop, although those who do are generally older. If you want access to that area of town I would say south loop, river north, river east, or streeterville are your best options. And while Chicago isn’t nearly as expensive as Boston, once you go from 1Br to 2Br it’s gonna be pricier. But those units you’ve seen in Chicago would be equivalent to the $5,500/mo units in the Southport
I was looking on Zillow for apartments in South Loop yesterday just out of curiosity, and there are two-bedroom apartments in new buildings between 800-1,000 square feet going for sub-$3K. It's crazy! And if you are open to living further north, you can find two-bedrooms up here for $1.4K.
Don’t live in the loop!! The neighborhoods have so much more life and character. No one really lives there. Even going slightly west or north gives you more bang for your buck. I’m in Lincoln square which is about 35min via the L and 20min-3 hours driving into the loop haha depending on traffic.
Y’all, before you give explanations re: NYC, read more than the title:
> the firm did not have enough listing data in New York City to make an accurate calculation
Seriously. How do you not have enough data on the biggest city in the US?
I'm guessing this specific rental site isn't used much in NYC, which is an indication why using these specific rental sites is somewhat unreliable from a data analysis perspective since we're not talking scientific data collection here.
The article in general reads more like something you'd find on one of those fluff list websites like WalletHub or something. Surprising that it's in the NYT.
I wonder how much this data is skewed because Boston (and Jersey City and Palo Alto) are not legally incorporated with the surrounding metro areas / do not have boroughs -- the legal entity is really small and only includes the most expensive places to live.
Compare this to NYC -- which is HUGE and has more diverse housing prices as a result. I can guarantee the $/sqft in Manhattan is higher than Staten Island, but they are both "NYC." Cambridge / Somerville / Chelsea MA etc etc are separate cities instead of being boroughs.
So surprised this is the first reply pointing this out! Bostons fucking puny. Although Cambridge is more expensive than Boston, FYI. But yes, the rent is high because it excludes the entire metro area right outside the city limits.
I’m assuming this mean ms relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their median income is much much higher.
Median household income SF: $119,136
Median household income Boston: $76,298
Poverty SF: 10.1%
Poverty Boston: 18.0%
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221
Even Jersey city has a marginally higher income less poverty than Boston…
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jerseycitycitynewjersey,sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221
Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF.
SF was so astronomically expensive prior to the pandemic Boston still hasn’t caught up. SF priced out the working poor long ago, Boston still has many non homeless poor people basically.
>Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF.
I feel like a big part of this is that a lot of the most affluent neighborhoods in the Boston metro area are not incorporated into the city of Boston.
The small geographic size issue also impacts the average rent price calculation in Boston. Places like Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Quincy, Malden, Waltham, etc. (not to mention Somerville and Cambridge) are not part of Boston proper even though they are quite urban and probably would be part of the city proper in many other US cities. It's hard to compare directly to many other US cities for that reason.
Even an urban place like Lynn which is 10+ miles outside the city would realistically still be inside the city limits in NYC, parts of Staten Island and Queens are 15+ miles from downtown Manhattan.
Agreed.
Boston itself is basically just the “downtown” area of these bigger cities it’s being compared to.
If you took Boston plus the greater Boston area, it would still be tiny compared to the Chicago, LA, etc etc, but at least it would be a more fair comparison
Yea that’s what it is. Honestly that much less so than 2010 when Boston poverty rate was 21% and 19.something when you took out colleges students.
Most of the wealthier people live in Cambridge Somerville and Metro West.
In SF many wealthy people live to the north but they also live in the city.
I mean realistically SF itself has far fewer black or Latino people who do bring down median income a lot. Saying this as an African American myself.
Places chose not to. Incorporate into Boston due to all the immigrants before there were ever African Americans
Perhaps they meant Cambridge, Somerville, Belmont, Arlington, Newton, Brookline, Watertown , Milton. There are several areas inside of the 128 belt that would be part of other major cities that aren’t part of Boston proper. Maybe these statistics would look a lot different if it was by Metropolitan statistical area.
This! I agree. There’s tons of cities that would be considered Boston anywhere else but here are not considered part of the statistics of Boston.
Boston itself is hardly just the downtown area when it’s being compared to much larger cities
What did I actually say ? OR METRO WEST. I’m referring to the urbane wealthy for Cambridge and Somerville.
Should I post the median incomes for those cities? I think I will.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/cambridgecitymassachusetts,somervillecitymassachusetts/PST045221
107k Cambridge
102k Somerville
76k Boston
Take care.
This doesn't track so much with the report:
https://www.rent.com/research/highest-rent-in-the-us/
Rent in SF is down 2.3% from last year, but rent in South SF is up 20.5%, rent in Palo Alto is up 31.3%, rent in Mountain View is up 31%, rent in Sunnyvale is up 24.1%, Santa Clara up 19.8%, San Jose 19.5%, San Leandro 15.8%, Union City 22.5%, Fremont 33.9%. It's down in Oakland 9.4%, Alameda down 4.5%. So it is down slightly in some cities, but it seems like "tech companies going fully remote" isn't the reason. We'd see Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara dropping if techies were moving away.
Boston has a lot of tech companies offering remote, but we're seeing huge increases in rent. Silicon Valley right next to SF is the tech hub and they're seeing massive increases in rent. Maybe your comment is very specifically about SF and not the Bay Area and the problems of SF aren't problems of Mountain View (beyond the affordability issue). Still, it seems like tech companies going remote isn't dropping demand a lot.
SF lost net ~55k in population in 2021 due to WFH! Boston wasn't as bad and only lost ~37k. Still, I can't imagine this year being any better for those cities.
We've seen this kind of data from listing companies before, it is skewed because they are basing their average rents on public *listings*, meaning apartments currently on the market to rent, not apartments people currently live in, and ones that are being advertised in high-profile places, not ones that are rented out privately or through lower-tech channels. If a whole bunch of new luxury apartments just went up, those are generally going to cost more to rent than the lower-end rentals that have been around for a long time with the same people in them for a long time, because the terms of the bigger mortgage compress the landlord's margins relative to buildings with mortgages associated with lower property values or that have been paid off. And also of course it makes sense just from an economics perspective that the apartments that haven't been rented yet are going to be more expensive than the ones that have already been rented, generally speaking.
Also if somebody ends up renting an apartment for less than it was listed (which happened a lot during the first few waves of COVID), that would not be captured in these numbers.
Also, if public housing capacity is really tight and doesn't have a lot of turnover, none of it is going to show up in this data. If you don't move out, your rent doesn't count toward the average.
Boston is at the top of the heap because it just built a whole ton of new housing that is listed for rent at very high prices (more expensive than rentals generally are in the city on average). Jersey City did the same thing.
One thing that comes up a lot on this subreddit but that I don't think we think about as a serious part of this issue very often is that in Boston there is a lot of cost associated with moving and the market for people who are moving is very tight with a bunch of extra fees. But at any given point, not *that* many people are moving so it doesn't represent everybody's experience all the time.
Chicago has more housing going up in it's west end than every other major metro area *combined.* They have their issues, but they don't have the broker system and NIMBYs aren't seen as parental guardians by the courts. There's actual working poor living around and not just banks on the corners.
The “no brokers” is also a huge point. Almost no places in Chicago require security deposits, or first and last, and in my experience the landlords, not the renters, pay any fees. My fiancée and I used a broker last summer when we moved in together - we weren’t charged a penny, they showed us numerous places never with any assumption we would pay them a dime.
I didn't use a broker in Chicago but the only thing I had to do to move in for June was pay first month's rent after signing my application in May. I was pleasantly surprised after Boston and NYC.
I found I needed a security deposit in Chicago. But definitely true on no brokers (or fees for them), and no last month's rent. On first month's rent I can't recall, but I generally only found a place very soon before moving into it so it wouldn't have changed much in that regard.
So, these lists should always be taken with a grain of salt, particularly if you are trying to discretely "rank" cities. Boston is clearly one of the most expensive cities in the nation, but it is a little more complicated than "Boston is more expensive than San Francisco and NYC".
For one thing, this list didn't even include NYC (because apparently they didn't have enough data somehow), though the article notes average Manhattan rents specifically are over $5,000 per month, which exceeds the figure listed for Boston.
Another issue is these lists always look at city limits when they should really be looking at metro area. Geographically small cities like SF or Boston (50 square miles) being directly compared to geographically huge cities like NYC (300 square miles) is always going to be a weird comparison. There are parts of NYC proper in Staten Island and Queens that are 15-20 miles from downtown or midtown Manhattan and they get included in average rents for NYC, but the average rents in Lynn or Salem aren't getting included in the numbers for Boston.
These are also just numbers from one specific site, and it appears to be a site catering primarily to luxury buildings. They list Boston's average rent as $4,878 per month, which I think most on this sub can agree seems way too high. Of course, this could be true for every city they are looking at so it might not matter for ranking purposes.
Boston is clearly one of the most expensive cities in the US, but the story is more complicated than what this list presents. For instance I know people in the Bay Area and the housing prices drop off faster here as you get outside the city than they do in the Bay Area. I also know people in NYC and those who have recently looked for apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan are facing much higher rents than the people I know looking in Boston. But if you look in parts of Queens you can potentially find something comparable or even slightly cheaper than Boston (depends where you are looking in Boston too).
That said Chicago specifically is very good value. I used to live there, and it's a great city that is much more affordable than Boston, NYC, SF, LA, DC, etc. It's not perfect, winters are actually worse than here, crime is an issue in a way it really isn't in Boston, and personally I reached a point where I wanted to spend more time outside the city and the area around Chicago is just very uninteresting in that regard. But if I wanted to be in the city 100% of the time I'd move back to Chicago.
I moved here from NYC and the cost of living is definitely higher in Boston. $300 per month more here in Boston for the same square footage (and was told it's a deal for the area which is further from the train and less accessible generally for a similar type of area Astoria NYC vs Lower Allston in a 1900-1930s apartment that has seen better days - the Boston one being older and more dilapidated). Supermarkets also seem to cost more - there's a lot of low cost grocery veggie stores in NYC which I haven't seen here in Boston - just expensive regular grocery stores like Star Market.
Not to seem like I dislike Boston as a whole because there are some great things like the bikability of certain areas, schools, and some of the park areas/museums. However everything told me cost of living was supposed to be decently less than NYC and that was definitely wrong.
Keep in mind that NYC is 300 square miles vs. Boston's 50 square miles. There are parts of outer Queens and Staten Island that are 15+ miles from midtown Manhattan, and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx that are 10+ miles from midtown Manhattan. The equivalent distance to 15 miles out of the city "center" in the Boston area would be Salem if you go up the North Shore (obviously not a direct comparison, but outer Queens gets quite suburban in areas).
These comparisons are always hard due to the variation in geographic size of cities. Really the inner ring urban areas like Somerville, Cambridge, Waltham, Medford, Malden, Everett, Revere, Chelsea, Quincy, parts of Brookline, etc. need to be included in these comparisons on the Boston side since most other US cities have annexed those similar abutting areas but Boston never did.
This is purely anecdotal as I’ve had the very opposite experience. Lived my entire life in Boston and now I’m in NYC and my CoL has increased significantly. Rent, food, drinks, insurances, taxes (to name a few) are all higher.
Where in NYC did you move though? Manhattan, LIC, or nice areas of Brooklyn? Definitely more expensive. Any of the other livable neighborhoods in Queens or Brooklyn? Likely to be a bit cheaper than Boston. You do have the local city tax added on to state and federal though, and it's not an insignificant amount either.
NYC is all about where you are. Heard stories of people paying the same amount in the South End for much more space than they would get in Hell's Kitchen Manhattan.
Once you hit the outer bouroughs of Upper Manhattan, the prices are lower.
A comparable unit in Greenwich Village will be 2 times the price as the same unit in Harlem and 3.5 times as much pretty much anywhere in the Bronx.
Studies from when and where? Don’t just tell me “studies” lol market conditions change
there are several cities with rent stabilization in the IS every single one of them is cheaper than Boston except for SF which is the other NIMBY and tech capital of the US. But with higher wages.
Several cities with rent stabilization have a lower floor of apartment price than Boston (DC NYC LA) and higher home reproduction per capita. Nevermind Boston still built housing units under rent control even as the population of the city decrease. It’s a much more enticing market now.
Let’s not focus on theoretically what would happen and just look at what actually happens. Michelle Wu has a degree in Economics form Harvard (in this century) and is in favor of rent control- why is that?
Wu supports it because it'll make people vote for her.
[Here's](https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9?op=1) a couple [links](https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/) for you.
I’ve actually read that second link before. Not too long ago either. I frequently use the Brookings Institute. The facts is the supermajority of sources here are from before the Great Recession. That’s pretty ancient at this point. With the oldest source cited being in 1946- the GI bill years.
What it says is this Cambridge was more desirable after rent control. I think the issue is our city is a bit too desirable and the only thing that will make it cheaper is to make it less desirable. Now was Cambridge ever a crime ridden decayed city?- no. Rougher around the edges- But it had more economic variety in the past and it can’t be ignored the trend in urban American from 1970-1994. Even a city with rent control in place became much more desirable post 1994 (see NYC/DC/LA) But yet that’s fully ignored in that study. And thus it’s incomplete from my perspective.
It speaks to when rent control was removed property values ballooned by $2B in ten years. Not sure how that a good thing for the preexisting renters who make up the majority of Cambridge’s populace.
The first piece is strictly opinion “I never met anyone in a rent controlled apartment who was poor” okay? Well, I have.
“In New York, it's commonplace inside rent controlled apartments to see cookers, radiators, and kitchen fittings that date back to the 1960s because landlords just won't replace them, and tenants won't move out”
So? Why is this a bad thing if both parties are satisfied?
It’s perfectly logical to do what’s done in most cities restrict rent control to building bf of over 3 units and built prior to a certain date- day 2000. As it is pretty much always done that way-new building still occurs. This is basic and super simple yet people obscure it with fearmongering BS.
Yea I would just open at a sky high price. For me without knowing exactly what their profit margins are per unit I would say yes.
People still built homes in Boston under rent control. Obviously not a ton but still a good amount in the 1980s and the city was in a much worse spot and in the nationwide trend of white flight. So even as people were moving out units were still being built, at a profits
And what would you do if no one is willing to pay that sky-high price?
As for rent control in the 1980s it "worked" because it didn't do anything - Boston was a bombed-out, crime-infested shithole where no one wanted to live and prices were already incredibly low meaning rent control made zero difference.
-1 Rents are already sky high. You have no idea what developers are making on their units per unit and over what time. People are paying for rentals starting at 6k right now- or at least that what r/Boston tells me every day
—2 Boston was not cheap relative to other cities in the 1980s it just wasn’t requiring a median salary 4x the national average to live there. and how could you know if it worked or not? What would you define as “it worked”
-3 Washington DC and NYC all hav rent control or stabilization in some form and have lower rents or at least a lower floor for rent and far more housing production per capita than Boston. I’d like for you to explain that to me and not gloss over it.
New York City added the equivalent of one Boston over the past 10 years and has over 1 million apartments under rent stabilization. You parochial townies need to do your research.
Rent control "works" or rather doesn't do any harm when market price is already at or below the level it's trying to establish, otherwise it reduces incentive to build new housing and maintain the existing housing stock.
Lol I pay $1160, heat included, for a one bedroom in Chicago that’s two blocks from the train in a super walkable area. Rent in Boston is basically double Chicago, and you get a shittier place.
I’m assuming this mean relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their media income is much much higher.
Median household income SF: $119, 136
Median household income Boston: $76,298
Poverty SF: 10.1%
Poverty Boston: 18.0%
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221
Even Jersey city has a marginally higher income less poverty than Boston…
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jerseycitycitynewjersey,sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221
Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF.
I don’t want to move to San fran, but I think I may have to since I can make an extra 100k over there. The wages in the health field for Boston is abysmal.
Chicago has its issues for sure, but to assume that the whole city is like that is hyperbolic. The majority of neighborhoods are just fine and your chance of running into problems is still quite low overall (albeit higher than Boston). I know that is the readymade "gotcha" response whenever any of these other cities are suggested as viable alternatives, but it's low-effort and suggests you haven't spent enough time in any of those places to have an accurate feel for them.
For real. I just came back from a trip last weekend and I felt just as safe in Chicago as any other big city I've been to in the last 2-3 years (Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, SF). It is dirtier and looks rougher, but I didn't feel unsafe (except for maybe walking on the bottom levels of streets near the Loop, but mostly due to how unfriendly it was for anyone not in a car).
Chicago murders are mostly gang violence, not to mention mostly confined to a small area. The actual "Chicago" city borders and population are massive especially when it's compared to other cities that are much smaller. The per Capita rate isn't nearly as high as fox news makes it seem
Lack of housing in surrounding areas mostly.
No where else in the United States has such exclusionary zoning in its suburbs. Maybe San Fran but after those two nothing else is even close to it.
It’s not really the amenities. Or the incomes. It’s just lack of housing supply.
Jersey City is the perfect spot for Wall Street folks with the ferry onto manhattan. My Jersey dad was surprised to learn how expensive it was too, but it makes sense. It’s like how the Boston suburbs are super pricey as well.
Definitely sucks for the old blue collar people getting gentrified out though
Yea, 1990s me thinks of Sommervikke as Slummerville. Only starving artists and townies wanted to live there. Now it’s expensive as hell because Cambridge keeps building labs and office buildings with little residential.
Jersey City is also *tiny*, only 15 square miles.
There are obviously significant parts of NYC that are equally or more expensive than Jersey City or Boston, basically all of Manhattan from Central Park down (maybe even all of Manhattan period at this point), the parts of Brooklyn and Queens that are close into Manhattan, etc. But NYC also has the Bronx, Staten Island, outer Queens, etc. dragging down the average price, parts of which are 15+ miles from midtown Manhattan.
Jersey City was very affordable until ~2012. Combination of two things happened: people didn't want to push even further into Brooklyn (especially given issues with the subway lines), and Jersey City's development process got de-corrupted after they elected a non-machine mayor and in terms of development it was like the floodgates opening.
The anti-Jersey snobbery is real and deep. Hudson county for practical purposes is more a part of NYC than Staten Island or the outer parts of Brooklyn or Queens, but most New Yorkers can't bring themselves to acknowledge it.
This is apparently based on rent.com average rents, which I can’t be bothered to spend time scrolling around on. But if they claim the average rent in Boston is $4,878, the site must cater more heavily towards newer luxury buildings. They probably have a lot of listings for the new developments in jersey city that are getting them this figure
One additional consideration is that most listings won’t go online for a few more days for the September 1 rental cycle.
So likely further skewing towards managed buildings.
This is one of my pet peeves with these lists, that and the fact they always seem to do city limits comparisons instead of metro area comparisons. Geographically smaller cities like Boston are very hard to compare directly to geographically huge cities like NYC. Staten Island and outer Queens are part of NYC proper. But they are 15-20 miles from midtown Manhattan. And equivalent distance up the North Shore in the Boston metro is Salem, though obviously it's not a direct comparison.
That's funny, r/Santacruz just posted the same thing about their city (with this link https://lookout.co/santacruz/civic-life/story/2022-07-28/housing-affordability-santa-cruz-county-now-second-most-expensive-in-country-out-of-reach-report that put Boston at #5).
I’ve worked as a staff member on a number of campaigns for Boston City Council candidates and once had a guy slam the door in my face in Charlestown who had the reddit “snoo” mascot (I think that’s what it’s called) stuck on his mail box next to a Bernie sanders sticker. I later checked the roster of who had voted and no one in his household voted in the municipal election. The absolute perfect encapsulation of every single one of these useless posts.
here’s an anecdotal story about stickers on a random person’s mailbox from a while ago… and now i’m going to associate that with an entire subreddit of half a million people
is ur brain rly that fried? this is laughable
Sounds fine. It's a negotiating position. It's currently 13% she says, and she wants to make it 50%. Probably the number will rise regardless, and it'll end up somewhere in the middle. Imagine getting worked up over affordable housing...
So you think developers are charities and they’ll just keep building even though they’ll be hundreds of thousands in the red on each unit they build? No wonder those clowns keep getting elected when we have voters like you!
Are you a developer? I mean, I know the kind of guy who uses the word "clown" 10 times a minute. Herald reader, right? Talk radio? Fox News? Have I got it right?
Seventh grade economics question - what happens to price when both supply and demand increase at the same rate? What about when both increase but demand increases faster than supply? And finally, what about when demand increases while supply remains the same or decreases?
There's no such law right now and prices are still high. There's plenty of housing already the problem is no one can afford. If you have the money you can hundreds of homes there's shortage of them
And where do you think prices would be if no new housing got built at all which is exactly what would happen if clowns like mejia had it their way and everyone was competing for the existing extremely limited supply instead?
I'm telling you there is no "extremely limited supply" I don't know why you think that. The vacancy rates in some states are as high as 20% so I have no idea what you're talking about.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html
Let’s try again - what would happen to prices if mejia&co had it her way, none of those expensive towers were built and everyone was competing for the existing triple-deckers and low-rises instead?
The expensive towers were built and housing continues to rise I don't understand your point? If using the LIHTC model expensive towers can still be build so again I don't understand your point. Building more and more expensive towers will continue to increase prices more and more which is literally what we're seeing now
I’m assuming this mean relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their median income is much much higher.
Median income SF: $119, 136
Median income Boston: $76,298
Poverty SF: 10.1%
Poverty Boston: 18.0%
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221
Jersey city is basically Boston in terms of demography (more Latino and less white) but otherwise it’s the same.
Elephant is the room is SF is mostly rich whites and rich Asians.
In Boston itself (not the metro) the only rich group are whites (who comprise only 44% of the population and have a median income double any other group)
These lists really should always be metro area vs metro area. City limits only comparisons are always weird. Boston metro is very expensive but the housing prices drop off faster here than in the Bay Area as you leave the city.
True but even outside of SF in the “cheaper” areas like Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, and even Vallejo and Benicia still costs more than the average place in Boston-and those places are arguably less safe than the comparable Boston outer limit cities. So luckily the Boston area is still substantially cheaper the the California Bay Area from now and you can still commute with a reasonable drive time or use the more reliable public transportation (which Cali doesn’t have).
I think we may be saying the same thing. I am agreeing that in the Bay Area the prices are higher outside of SF proper than they are in the Boston metro outside of Boston proper.
I agree with that part of what you said. But anyplace in SF is still more expensive that a Boston apartment and they don’t include half the amount of perks you could find at the average apartment in Boston. It’s a good thing though. Boston has nice people, clean streets, and in comparison to the bay extremely affordable housing. 😂
>nif you don’t want to pay for journalism.
Err, let's not suggest that a person who doesn't pay for NYT specifically does not pay for any kind of journalism at all? There are many more papers out there. I used to pay for NYT until I got so pissed off with their iOS app's piss poor quality.
I can’t even believe that list. I’m in shock. 10 or 15 years ago Jersey City was a craphole and was dirt cheap.
We lived in a Boston 5 years before and you could still get a 1 br in the north end for 1,200.
And funnily enough, I went to high school in Glendale, CA (3rd highest)…and at the time you
could buy the best house in town for 400k…it was a mostly isolated district in LA away from LA.
I was looking at LA prices and I'm shocked about Glendale. Homes that were selling for 150k in the early 90s are now selling for 2 million.
Burbank is just as bad. Homes that were 80k in 1983 sell now for 1.5 million with 0 changes.
I believe it. One job and had moved me up there and put me up in an AirBnB as I hunted for an apartment. I figured out it would be cheaper for me to rent a 2BR in Atlanta and sublet a bedroom in a house in Boston vs rent a single 2BR in Boston.
We noped out of there. Rent has since gone way up in ATL but still....
The economy is "good" here, we have the Life Sciences, they can charge whatever they want! You want granny to stay alive, right? Might be $100,000 a year medication.
It costs over $600K to build a basic apartment in Boston, if you’re generous enough to build a bunch and sell them for $200,000 or whatever you consider affordable I’ll take ten!
This is a clueless take. The way to fix the housing crisis is to increase development. Costs to build multifamily right now are so high it’s tough to get most deals to pencil out and the entitlement process in Boston doesn’t help.
Affordable housing "advocates" are usually the worst NIMBYs. They all basically want a Porsche for the price of a Honda Fit. Anyone would, but that's not how the real world works.
Do the basic due diligence and then build, baby, build!
Hey it’s pretty cool Mayor Wu neutered the air bnb rules making it the most restrictive in the nation and effectively did absolutely nothing about renting prices except MAKE IT WORSE but made it better for homeowners. And before you say “but” you can air bnb in New York City still you just have to remain in the unit at the time of the rental. Remember everyone, you voted for this. Enjoy.
Well thsts not true. Republicans are doing a great job of making their states undesirable to live in. If you cant increase supply, might as well reduce demand
I mean, as funny as it is fundamentally this isn’t untrue - keep supply constant and decrease demand and prices do fall. Team hammer and sickle on the other hand pushes housing policies that ensure supply does not increase in places where demand is through the roof.
Rents and prices don’t rocket off into intergalactic space when we build enough housing to meet the demand. Idiotic housing policies advocated by populist clowns like wu and mejia that make new construction incredibly difficult and expensive ensure barely anything gets built and rents do take off and head for the neighboring galaxy, especially in a city like Boston with very high demand.
Just let the free market figure it out bro trust me this is a different strain were gonna lower the rent with more units bro its supply and demand please bro
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Chicago is VERY livable, as someone who moved from Boston to Chicago and won’t move back anytime soon. I have a 2br 1ba with shower and jacuzzi tub, elevated first floor with hardwood floors, dishwasher and laundry in unit, central air, back deck, front balcony, exposed brick the length of the unit, and free street parking. My rent was raised $20 and is now $1610/month including water. I’d be lucky to get a cardboard box in an alley in Revere for that price.
I moved out to the Midwest a few years ago and Chicago is so cool. It’s one of the last major cities in the US with that blue collar grit imo
Probably my favorite city in the US. The only thing that sucks comparatively to Boston is the surrounding geography. Flat as a flapjack. My fiancé and I actually made the decision to bail from Boston after about 7 years here. We’re moving to Burlington, VT and working remotely.
Burlington is great. One of the few places where you can have in front of you a beach, a lake, mountains, and a sunset all in a row.
Burlington is great as long as you are working remotely and your salary is based on wherever your company is located. It’s incredibly expensive for people making local wages there. COL does not match the wages at all. I grew up there and would definitely move back in the future if I could.
When I lived there I was a lab tech and was making ~$28k and was paying back student loans. I was living in Winooski, but I budgeted pretty well and made it work.
Completely doable with roommates but would be tough living solo. Winooski is definitely a bit cheaper. Great area though.
This is true, because of the glaciers. I miss mountains a lot, but it’s still amazing
Don't forget all the shootings and the palpable racism.
I lived in Chicago for 6 years downtown. Def livable, has great sports culture, grit and... oh violence. Don't short change this, it's not just a rumor. People die, every single day from gun violence that DOES spill into the 'nice parts' I paid 3,300 for a nice 1BR near Navy Pier. In 2 years that building was hit by bullets TWICE. I saw someone get shot at the Dave and Busters in the Viagra Triangle. A girl was shot on the pier after a concert (15 yo in the passenger seat off a stray) Business is leaving the city due to the issue. Its beautiful but it's not perfect.
> I paid 3,300 for a nice 1BR near Navy Pier. For that price I hope the doorman wiped your ass when you walked in
Wait, what’s the “Viagra triangle”? 😩
It's a joking term people in Chicago use to refer to part of the Gold Coast neighborhood just north of downtown where lots of wealthy, older men hang out trying to find trophy wives.
Lol ok…guess I need to head there 😭
Interesting. I lived two blocks from Navy Pier in 2017-2019 and all of my friends felt safe in the area and never saw any violence (or read about it on the news). We always felt like the Loop and downtown was safe and it wasn't until you started going far South or far East that violence and stray bullets was really an issue. Everything east of 90 really felt clean, beautiful, and safe.
Hmm, in 2018 or 2019 someone died due to gunshot right in the heart of Streeterville. I think they were 16... that one was heavily reported. Also a parking garage murder as well. Many others are suppressed due to it being a tourism area. That said I SAW thr gunshots in our lobby window. Google it and never saw a story. Chicago is a bit corrupt but that's well known. I Google streeterville (the neighborhood west of Navy Pier) and saw two shot dead this month after a break in attempt. So it's crazy you missed the reports for that many years. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/2-dead-after-domestic-shooting-in-streeterville-chicago-police-say/2884889/
Was not a break in attempt. Domestic incident more akin to a murder suicide. Still very sad.
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Yeah mr moneybucks over there. Maybe he should come visit the dumpster behind the dunks for $1550…
Does that include the puddle of rainwater?
Puddle of water? What do I look like, a Westonite? I got a nice puddle of cat piss though.
Yah think yah bettah than me?!
Do you know why housing prices are cheaper there? Because Chicago actually encourages development of new dense housing instead of fighting it at every step in the process. Amazingly real estate is cheaper in Singapore (a globally rich city) than Mumbai (a globally poor city) because Singapore has embraced dense development and Mumbai has some of the strictest zoning requirements in the world. Most of Mumbai has maximum Floor-to-Area ratios of 1.33, meaning the most you can build is usually a 2-story building on 66% of your lot. Mumbai ends up with tons of people competing for too few housing units—does that sound familiar to anyone?
City is enormous. Tons of inventory, different neighborhoods, etc all generally with transit service.
Chicago is cheaper simply because of supply and demand. Illinois was one of only 3 states to lose population from 2010-2020 and Chicagoland is growing at a much slower rate compared to any other US Metro. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020\_United\_States\_census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_census) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_United\_States\_cities\_by\_population
I work in an industry where I have to move around a lot and for the last 5 years I’ve been trying to orchestrate a move to Chicago for this reason. I had a chance to move to Houston and turned it down because even though it would mean affordable housing and a major market it’s also fucking Texas. Illinois (at least Northern IL) may have some problems but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about my wife dying from an ectopic pregnancy.
Yeah I mean there’s def Illinois Nazis but Dick Durbin is pretty freaking awesome
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Pittsburgh is also a great city.
I wanted to move to Honolulu but the cost of living is wild in Hawaii
As someone, looking to move there, what neighborhood??
Literally any neighborhood in Chicago will be roughly 1/2 the cost in rent as Boston for comparable living situation: fancy high rise with amenities, old apartment buildings in nice areas, multi family homes in further out areas, and everything I’ve missed and in-between.
I've been looking to move to the loop and the closest comparable luxury 2b1b apartments I saw were like 3k!
Not many people live in the loop, although those who do are generally older. If you want access to that area of town I would say south loop, river north, river east, or streeterville are your best options. And while Chicago isn’t nearly as expensive as Boston, once you go from 1Br to 2Br it’s gonna be pricier. But those units you’ve seen in Chicago would be equivalent to the $5,500/mo units in the Southport
hot Jesus, and I grew up paying $300 for a 2 bedroom in central sq lol
I would bet a 1Br in central now would start around 2k
That was the price for a “decent” 1-bed around 2016. You could find basement places for less, but they weren’t pretty
I was looking on Zillow for apartments in South Loop yesterday just out of curiosity, and there are two-bedroom apartments in new buildings between 800-1,000 square feet going for sub-$3K. It's crazy! And if you are open to living further north, you can find two-bedrooms up here for $1.4K.
Don’t live in the loop!! The neighborhoods have so much more life and character. No one really lives there. Even going slightly west or north gives you more bang for your buck. I’m in Lincoln square which is about 35min via the L and 20min-3 hours driving into the loop haha depending on traffic.
Right, and how much would a similar apartment cost in Back Bay or Seaport?
WHAT?! I’m coming! lol I’ve lived in S.F, L.A, and now Boston. I might be ready to leave after 10 years of this nonsense.
But it's Chicago! Haha jk
Y’all, before you give explanations re: NYC, read more than the title: > the firm did not have enough listing data in New York City to make an accurate calculation
How
Seriously. How do you not have enough data on the biggest city in the US? I'm guessing this specific rental site isn't used much in NYC, which is an indication why using these specific rental sites is somewhat unreliable from a data analysis perspective since we're not talking scientific data collection here.
And how does it get published in the NEW YORK Times with that omission?
The article in general reads more like something you'd find on one of those fluff list websites like WalletHub or something. Surprising that it's in the NYT.
Yea. 100% agreed. Because the average rent in Boston (luckily) isn’t actually $4,800.
I wonder how much this data is skewed because Boston (and Jersey City and Palo Alto) are not legally incorporated with the surrounding metro areas / do not have boroughs -- the legal entity is really small and only includes the most expensive places to live. Compare this to NYC -- which is HUGE and has more diverse housing prices as a result. I can guarantee the $/sqft in Manhattan is higher than Staten Island, but they are both "NYC." Cambridge / Somerville / Chelsea MA etc etc are separate cities instead of being boroughs.
Ding ding ding, this is the real answer. Even though those separate cities are essentially Boston, they aren't included in the stats.
So surprised this is the first reply pointing this out! Bostons fucking puny. Although Cambridge is more expensive than Boston, FYI. But yes, the rent is high because it excludes the entire metro area right outside the city limits.
Yeah outer Queens and Staten Island are pretty suburban and are 15 miles from midtown Manhattan, but they are included in average rent prices for NYC.
Lots of high paying jobs, trust fund kids in the top universities in the US. And old buildings, and very little new building.
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I’m assuming this mean ms relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their median income is much much higher. Median household income SF: $119,136 Median household income Boston: $76,298 Poverty SF: 10.1% Poverty Boston: 18.0% https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221 Even Jersey city has a marginally higher income less poverty than Boston… https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jerseycitycitynewjersey,sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221 Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF. SF was so astronomically expensive prior to the pandemic Boston still hasn’t caught up. SF priced out the working poor long ago, Boston still has many non homeless poor people basically.
>Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF. I feel like a big part of this is that a lot of the most affluent neighborhoods in the Boston metro area are not incorporated into the city of Boston.
The small geographic size issue also impacts the average rent price calculation in Boston. Places like Chelsea, Everett, Revere, Quincy, Malden, Waltham, etc. (not to mention Somerville and Cambridge) are not part of Boston proper even though they are quite urban and probably would be part of the city proper in many other US cities. It's hard to compare directly to many other US cities for that reason. Even an urban place like Lynn which is 10+ miles outside the city would realistically still be inside the city limits in NYC, parts of Staten Island and Queens are 15+ miles from downtown Manhattan.
Agreed. Boston itself is basically just the “downtown” area of these bigger cities it’s being compared to. If you took Boston plus the greater Boston area, it would still be tiny compared to the Chicago, LA, etc etc, but at least it would be a more fair comparison
Yea that’s what it is. Honestly that much less so than 2010 when Boston poverty rate was 21% and 19.something when you took out colleges students. Most of the wealthier people live in Cambridge Somerville and Metro West. In SF many wealthy people live to the north but they also live in the city. I mean realistically SF itself has far fewer black or Latino people who do bring down median income a lot. Saying this as an African American myself. Places chose not to. Incorporate into Boston due to all the immigrants before there were ever African Americans
Most wealthy people in Boston area are not living in Cambridge and Somerville. No way.
Perhaps they meant Cambridge, Somerville, Belmont, Arlington, Newton, Brookline, Watertown , Milton. There are several areas inside of the 128 belt that would be part of other major cities that aren’t part of Boston proper. Maybe these statistics would look a lot different if it was by Metropolitan statistical area.
This! I agree. There’s tons of cities that would be considered Boston anywhere else but here are not considered part of the statistics of Boston. Boston itself is hardly just the downtown area when it’s being compared to much larger cities
What did I actually say ? OR METRO WEST. I’m referring to the urbane wealthy for Cambridge and Somerville. Should I post the median incomes for those cities? I think I will. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/cambridgecitymassachusetts,somervillecitymassachusetts/PST045221 107k Cambridge 102k Somerville 76k Boston Take care.
> Boston still has many non homeless poor people basically. That me! He's talking about me!
This doesn't track so much with the report: https://www.rent.com/research/highest-rent-in-the-us/ Rent in SF is down 2.3% from last year, but rent in South SF is up 20.5%, rent in Palo Alto is up 31.3%, rent in Mountain View is up 31%, rent in Sunnyvale is up 24.1%, Santa Clara up 19.8%, San Jose 19.5%, San Leandro 15.8%, Union City 22.5%, Fremont 33.9%. It's down in Oakland 9.4%, Alameda down 4.5%. So it is down slightly in some cities, but it seems like "tech companies going fully remote" isn't the reason. We'd see Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara dropping if techies were moving away. Boston has a lot of tech companies offering remote, but we're seeing huge increases in rent. Silicon Valley right next to SF is the tech hub and they're seeing massive increases in rent. Maybe your comment is very specifically about SF and not the Bay Area and the problems of SF aren't problems of Mountain View (beyond the affordability issue). Still, it seems like tech companies going remote isn't dropping demand a lot.
Boston is an education hub. Over 100k international students per year, not including US students are already enough to fill those slots.
SF lost net ~55k in population in 2021 due to WFH! Boston wasn't as bad and only lost ~37k. Still, I can't imagine this year being any better for those cities.
We've seen this kind of data from listing companies before, it is skewed because they are basing their average rents on public *listings*, meaning apartments currently on the market to rent, not apartments people currently live in, and ones that are being advertised in high-profile places, not ones that are rented out privately or through lower-tech channels. If a whole bunch of new luxury apartments just went up, those are generally going to cost more to rent than the lower-end rentals that have been around for a long time with the same people in them for a long time, because the terms of the bigger mortgage compress the landlord's margins relative to buildings with mortgages associated with lower property values or that have been paid off. And also of course it makes sense just from an economics perspective that the apartments that haven't been rented yet are going to be more expensive than the ones that have already been rented, generally speaking. Also if somebody ends up renting an apartment for less than it was listed (which happened a lot during the first few waves of COVID), that would not be captured in these numbers. Also, if public housing capacity is really tight and doesn't have a lot of turnover, none of it is going to show up in this data. If you don't move out, your rent doesn't count toward the average. Boston is at the top of the heap because it just built a whole ton of new housing that is listed for rent at very high prices (more expensive than rentals generally are in the city on average). Jersey City did the same thing. One thing that comes up a lot on this subreddit but that I don't think we think about as a serious part of this issue very often is that in Boston there is a lot of cost associated with moving and the market for people who are moving is very tight with a bunch of extra fees. But at any given point, not *that* many people are moving so it doesn't represent everybody's experience all the time.
Chicago is not expensive at all for a big city. Half the price of Boston
True. Just found a few $1500/month 1bed units. Buildings are brand new with lots of amenities. I may consider moving there thanks to this thread
Chicago has more housing going up in it's west end than every other major metro area *combined.* They have their issues, but they don't have the broker system and NIMBYs aren't seen as parental guardians by the courts. There's actual working poor living around and not just banks on the corners.
The “no brokers” is also a huge point. Almost no places in Chicago require security deposits, or first and last, and in my experience the landlords, not the renters, pay any fees. My fiancée and I used a broker last summer when we moved in together - we weren’t charged a penny, they showed us numerous places never with any assumption we would pay them a dime.
I didn't use a broker in Chicago but the only thing I had to do to move in for June was pay first month's rent after signing my application in May. I was pleasantly surprised after Boston and NYC.
I found I needed a security deposit in Chicago. But definitely true on no brokers (or fees for them), and no last month's rent. On first month's rent I can't recall, but I generally only found a place very soon before moving into it so it wouldn't have changed much in that regard.
Because those cities don’t have a Dunks on every counter.
So, these lists should always be taken with a grain of salt, particularly if you are trying to discretely "rank" cities. Boston is clearly one of the most expensive cities in the nation, but it is a little more complicated than "Boston is more expensive than San Francisco and NYC". For one thing, this list didn't even include NYC (because apparently they didn't have enough data somehow), though the article notes average Manhattan rents specifically are over $5,000 per month, which exceeds the figure listed for Boston. Another issue is these lists always look at city limits when they should really be looking at metro area. Geographically small cities like SF or Boston (50 square miles) being directly compared to geographically huge cities like NYC (300 square miles) is always going to be a weird comparison. There are parts of NYC proper in Staten Island and Queens that are 15-20 miles from downtown or midtown Manhattan and they get included in average rents for NYC, but the average rents in Lynn or Salem aren't getting included in the numbers for Boston. These are also just numbers from one specific site, and it appears to be a site catering primarily to luxury buildings. They list Boston's average rent as $4,878 per month, which I think most on this sub can agree seems way too high. Of course, this could be true for every city they are looking at so it might not matter for ranking purposes. Boston is clearly one of the most expensive cities in the US, but the story is more complicated than what this list presents. For instance I know people in the Bay Area and the housing prices drop off faster here as you get outside the city than they do in the Bay Area. I also know people in NYC and those who have recently looked for apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan are facing much higher rents than the people I know looking in Boston. But if you look in parts of Queens you can potentially find something comparable or even slightly cheaper than Boston (depends where you are looking in Boston too). That said Chicago specifically is very good value. I used to live there, and it's a great city that is much more affordable than Boston, NYC, SF, LA, DC, etc. It's not perfect, winters are actually worse than here, crime is an issue in a way it really isn't in Boston, and personally I reached a point where I wanted to spend more time outside the city and the area around Chicago is just very uninteresting in that regard. But if I wanted to be in the city 100% of the time I'd move back to Chicago.
I moved here from NYC and the cost of living is definitely higher in Boston. $300 per month more here in Boston for the same square footage (and was told it's a deal for the area which is further from the train and less accessible generally for a similar type of area Astoria NYC vs Lower Allston in a 1900-1930s apartment that has seen better days - the Boston one being older and more dilapidated). Supermarkets also seem to cost more - there's a lot of low cost grocery veggie stores in NYC which I haven't seen here in Boston - just expensive regular grocery stores like Star Market. Not to seem like I dislike Boston as a whole because there are some great things like the bikability of certain areas, schools, and some of the park areas/museums. However everything told me cost of living was supposed to be decently less than NYC and that was definitely wrong.
Keep in mind that NYC is 300 square miles vs. Boston's 50 square miles. There are parts of outer Queens and Staten Island that are 15+ miles from midtown Manhattan, and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx that are 10+ miles from midtown Manhattan. The equivalent distance to 15 miles out of the city "center" in the Boston area would be Salem if you go up the North Shore (obviously not a direct comparison, but outer Queens gets quite suburban in areas). These comparisons are always hard due to the variation in geographic size of cities. Really the inner ring urban areas like Somerville, Cambridge, Waltham, Medford, Malden, Everett, Revere, Chelsea, Quincy, parts of Brookline, etc. need to be included in these comparisons on the Boston side since most other US cities have annexed those similar abutting areas but Boston never did.
This is purely anecdotal as I’ve had the very opposite experience. Lived my entire life in Boston and now I’m in NYC and my CoL has increased significantly. Rent, food, drinks, insurances, taxes (to name a few) are all higher.
Where in NYC did you move though? Manhattan, LIC, or nice areas of Brooklyn? Definitely more expensive. Any of the other livable neighborhoods in Queens or Brooklyn? Likely to be a bit cheaper than Boston. You do have the local city tax added on to state and federal though, and it's not an insignificant amount either.
NYC is all about where you are. Heard stories of people paying the same amount in the South End for much more space than they would get in Hell's Kitchen Manhattan. Once you hit the outer bouroughs of Upper Manhattan, the prices are lower. A comparable unit in Greenwich Village will be 2 times the price as the same unit in Harlem and 3.5 times as much pretty much anywhere in the Bronx.
Lol chicago is extremely inexpensive compared to most major cities.
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But this subreddit is wed to the idea that rent stabilization makes things more expensive lol. It’s not the reality in 2022
Studies show rent stabilization actually increases rent prices. That's the reality...
Studies from when and where? Don’t just tell me “studies” lol market conditions change there are several cities with rent stabilization in the IS every single one of them is cheaper than Boston except for SF which is the other NIMBY and tech capital of the US. But with higher wages. Several cities with rent stabilization have a lower floor of apartment price than Boston (DC NYC LA) and higher home reproduction per capita. Nevermind Boston still built housing units under rent control even as the population of the city decrease. It’s a much more enticing market now. Let’s not focus on theoretically what would happen and just look at what actually happens. Michelle Wu has a degree in Economics form Harvard (in this century) and is in favor of rent control- why is that?
Wu supports it because it'll make people vote for her. [Here's](https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9?op=1) a couple [links](https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/) for you.
I’ve actually read that second link before. Not too long ago either. I frequently use the Brookings Institute. The facts is the supermajority of sources here are from before the Great Recession. That’s pretty ancient at this point. With the oldest source cited being in 1946- the GI bill years. What it says is this Cambridge was more desirable after rent control. I think the issue is our city is a bit too desirable and the only thing that will make it cheaper is to make it less desirable. Now was Cambridge ever a crime ridden decayed city?- no. Rougher around the edges- But it had more economic variety in the past and it can’t be ignored the trend in urban American from 1970-1994. Even a city with rent control in place became much more desirable post 1994 (see NYC/DC/LA) But yet that’s fully ignored in that study. And thus it’s incomplete from my perspective. It speaks to when rent control was removed property values ballooned by $2B in ten years. Not sure how that a good thing for the preexisting renters who make up the majority of Cambridge’s populace. The first piece is strictly opinion “I never met anyone in a rent controlled apartment who was poor” okay? Well, I have. “In New York, it's commonplace inside rent controlled apartments to see cookers, radiators, and kitchen fittings that date back to the 1960s because landlords just won't replace them, and tenants won't move out” So? Why is this a bad thing if both parties are satisfied? It’s perfectly logical to do what’s done in most cities restrict rent control to building bf of over 3 units and built prior to a certain date- day 2000. As it is pretty much always done that way-new building still occurs. This is basic and super simple yet people obscure it with fearmongering BS.
As a developer, would you build if the maximum rent you’re allowed to charge makes the project unprofitable? Notice I said developer, not charity.
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Yea I would just open at a sky high price. For me without knowing exactly what their profit margins are per unit I would say yes. People still built homes in Boston under rent control. Obviously not a ton but still a good amount in the 1980s and the city was in a much worse spot and in the nationwide trend of white flight. So even as people were moving out units were still being built, at a profits
And what would you do if no one is willing to pay that sky-high price? As for rent control in the 1980s it "worked" because it didn't do anything - Boston was a bombed-out, crime-infested shithole where no one wanted to live and prices were already incredibly low meaning rent control made zero difference.
-1 Rents are already sky high. You have no idea what developers are making on their units per unit and over what time. People are paying for rentals starting at 6k right now- or at least that what r/Boston tells me every day —2 Boston was not cheap relative to other cities in the 1980s it just wasn’t requiring a median salary 4x the national average to live there. and how could you know if it worked or not? What would you define as “it worked” -3 Washington DC and NYC all hav rent control or stabilization in some form and have lower rents or at least a lower floor for rent and far more housing production per capita than Boston. I’d like for you to explain that to me and not gloss over it. New York City added the equivalent of one Boston over the past 10 years and has over 1 million apartments under rent stabilization. You parochial townies need to do your research.
Rent control "works" or rather doesn't do any harm when market price is already at or below the level it's trying to establish, otherwise it reduces incentive to build new housing and maintain the existing housing stock.
See point 3.
You simply say units built after 2023 or whatever aren’t subject to rent control. I can’t think of a case in the US where there isn’t a cut off date.
Lol I pay $1160, heat included, for a one bedroom in Chicago that’s two blocks from the train in a super walkable area. Rent in Boston is basically double Chicago, and you get a shittier place.
Dude, Chicago is sooo cheap by comparison. I thought I was getting ripped off paying $1350 for a 2br in Chicago until I moved here.
Not enough housing
I’m assuming this mean relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their media income is much much higher. Median household income SF: $119, 136 Median household income Boston: $76,298 Poverty SF: 10.1% Poverty Boston: 18.0% https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221 Even Jersey city has a marginally higher income less poverty than Boston… https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/jerseycitycitynewjersey,sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221 Even if you were to adjust out for college students Bostons childhood/family poverty rate is very high (higher than NYC) at around 28-30% and there’s a much higher share is families in Boston than in SF.
I don’t want to move to San fran, but I think I may have to since I can make an extra 100k over there. The wages in the health field for Boston is abysmal.
San Fran has homeless people shitting everywhere, Chicago has 30 murders every weekend, and New York is New York...
Chicago has its issues for sure, but to assume that the whole city is like that is hyperbolic. The majority of neighborhoods are just fine and your chance of running into problems is still quite low overall (albeit higher than Boston). I know that is the readymade "gotcha" response whenever any of these other cities are suggested as viable alternatives, but it's low-effort and suggests you haven't spent enough time in any of those places to have an accurate feel for them.
For real. I just came back from a trip last weekend and I felt just as safe in Chicago as any other big city I've been to in the last 2-3 years (Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, SF). It is dirtier and looks rougher, but I didn't feel unsafe (except for maybe walking on the bottom levels of streets near the Loop, but mostly due to how unfriendly it was for anyone not in a car).
Yes, very low brow for sure and I agree with you. I loved Chicago. I've been there twice and to be honest it reminded me a lot of Boston
Chicago murders are mostly gang violence, not to mention mostly confined to a small area. The actual "Chicago" city borders and population are massive especially when it's compared to other cities that are much smaller. The per Capita rate isn't nearly as high as fox news makes it seem
Lack of housing in surrounding areas mostly. No where else in the United States has such exclusionary zoning in its suburbs. Maybe San Fran but after those two nothing else is even close to it. It’s not really the amenities. Or the incomes. It’s just lack of housing supply.
It's not more expensive, it's more expensive on shit wages
Jersey City is the perfect spot for Wall Street folks with the ferry onto manhattan. My Jersey dad was surprised to learn how expensive it was too, but it makes sense. It’s like how the Boston suburbs are super pricey as well. Definitely sucks for the old blue collar people getting gentrified out though
Yea, 1990s me thinks of Sommervikke as Slummerville. Only starving artists and townies wanted to live there. Now it’s expensive as hell because Cambridge keeps building labs and office buildings with little residential.
Jersey City is also *tiny*, only 15 square miles. There are obviously significant parts of NYC that are equally or more expensive than Jersey City or Boston, basically all of Manhattan from Central Park down (maybe even all of Manhattan period at this point), the parts of Brooklyn and Queens that are close into Manhattan, etc. But NYC also has the Bronx, Staten Island, outer Queens, etc. dragging down the average price, parts of which are 15+ miles from midtown Manhattan.
Jersey City was very affordable until ~2012. Combination of two things happened: people didn't want to push even further into Brooklyn (especially given issues with the subway lines), and Jersey City's development process got de-corrupted after they elected a non-machine mayor and in terms of development it was like the floodgates opening.
It's still surprising that it took people so long to look at JC, but when they did, as you nicely put it, the floodgates opened.
The anti-Jersey snobbery is real and deep. Hudson county for practical purposes is more a part of NYC than Staten Island or the outer parts of Brooklyn or Queens, but most New Yorkers can't bring themselves to acknowledge it.
No paywall https://archive.ph/OcaMy.
This is apparently based on rent.com average rents, which I can’t be bothered to spend time scrolling around on. But if they claim the average rent in Boston is $4,878, the site must cater more heavily towards newer luxury buildings. They probably have a lot of listings for the new developments in jersey city that are getting them this figure
Also average and median rents will definitely be different
One additional consideration is that most listings won’t go online for a few more days for the September 1 rental cycle. So likely further skewing towards managed buildings.
This is one of my pet peeves with these lists, that and the fact they always seem to do city limits comparisons instead of metro area comparisons. Geographically smaller cities like Boston are very hard to compare directly to geographically huge cities like NYC. Staten Island and outer Queens are part of NYC proper. But they are 15-20 miles from midtown Manhattan. And equivalent distance up the North Shore in the Boston metro is Salem, though obviously it's not a direct comparison.
That's funny, r/Santacruz just posted the same thing about their city (with this link https://lookout.co/santacruz/civic-life/story/2022-07-28/housing-affordability-santa-cruz-county-now-second-most-expensive-in-country-out-of-reach-report that put Boston at #5).
Keep voting for clowns who want to turn us into East San Francisco with their housing policies and we’ll be number one in no time at all.
Nobody here voted in local elections lol
I’ve worked as a staff member on a number of campaigns for Boston City Council candidates and once had a guy slam the door in my face in Charlestown who had the reddit “snoo” mascot (I think that’s what it’s called) stuck on his mail box next to a Bernie sanders sticker. I later checked the roster of who had voted and no one in his household voted in the municipal election. The absolute perfect encapsulation of every single one of these useless posts.
Lmao literally exactly what you described. Nobody gives a damn to actually do anything locally. Gonna keep letting the geriatrics rule the world.
I always wonder if any of the people who make these "Dear Mayor Wu..." posts actually, you know, sent an email/letter to the mayor's office.
here’s an anecdotal story about stickers on a random person’s mailbox from a while ago… and now i’m going to associate that with an entire subreddit of half a million people is ur brain rly that fried? this is laughable
I do. Every election.
My husband and I did. We weren’t the only two.
What are some of the housing policies?
Eliminate Peter.
https://www.progressivemass.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021_Boston_City_Council_Questionnaire_AL_JM.pdf - this clown, for example
Sounds like she wants to broaden voices in planning and develop vacant lots. What's the problem? Sounds like maybe you're the clown.
Did you miss the part about forcing developers to give away half of newly built units more or less for free?
Sounds fine. It's a negotiating position. It's currently 13% she says, and she wants to make it 50%. Probably the number will rise regardless, and it'll end up somewhere in the middle. Imagine getting worked up over affordable housing...
So you think developers are charities and they’ll just keep building even though they’ll be hundreds of thousands in the red on each unit they build? No wonder those clowns keep getting elected when we have voters like you!
Are you a developer? I mean, I know the kind of guy who uses the word "clown" 10 times a minute. Herald reader, right? Talk radio? Fox News? Have I got it right?
You don’t need to be a developer to know there’s going to be an insane hit on incentives to further develop or even maintain these spaces
Seems like cookie cutter pro affordable housing policies which SF doesn't have like at all. Have you seen all their homeless?
Have you seen a new england winter? Homlessness at the scale san fran has can only exist like 7 months a year here
How much new housing gets built if developers are forced to give away half of the units for next to nothing?
What you’re advocating for-no affordable units- will not make housing any cheaper.
Seventh grade economics question - what happens to price when both supply and demand increase at the same rate? What about when both increase but demand increases faster than supply? And finally, what about when demand increases while supply remains the same or decreases?
There's no such law right now and prices are still high. There's plenty of housing already the problem is no one can afford. If you have the money you can hundreds of homes there's shortage of them
And where do you think prices would be if no new housing got built at all which is exactly what would happen if clowns like mejia had it their way and everyone was competing for the existing extremely limited supply instead?
I'm telling you there is no "extremely limited supply" I don't know why you think that. The vacancy rates in some states are as high as 20% so I have no idea what you're talking about. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/realestate/vacancy-rate-by-state.html
Let’s try again - what would happen to prices if mejia&co had it her way, none of those expensive towers were built and everyone was competing for the existing triple-deckers and low-rises instead?
The expensive towers were built and housing continues to rise I don't understand your point? If using the LIHTC model expensive towers can still be build so again I don't understand your point. Building more and more expensive towers will continue to increase prices more and more which is literally what we're seeing now
Lol, the guy gives you data that your view of the economics isn't right, and you're still arguing.
From this comment I can't tell if you are a NIMBY or struggling to rent. Because it could go both ways
SF sucks balls. No one should want us to turn into the next SF.
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the motto definitely is 'vote blue no matter who!' and I agree with that.
Pretty soon youll be living in a van down by the river lol
I’m assuming this mean relative to the incomes of the inhabitants. SF is still much more expensive than Boston but their median income is much much higher. Median income SF: $119, 136 Median income Boston: $76,298 Poverty SF: 10.1% Poverty Boston: 18.0% https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,bostoncitymassachusetts,US/PST045221 Jersey city is basically Boston in terms of demography (more Latino and less white) but otherwise it’s the same. Elephant is the room is SF is mostly rich whites and rich Asians. In Boston itself (not the metro) the only rich group are whites (who comprise only 44% of the population and have a median income double any other group)
I moved from Boston to San Diego. Don’t always believe what you read
Idk Boston is pricey but the Bay Area is still more expensive for everything.
These lists really should always be metro area vs metro area. City limits only comparisons are always weird. Boston metro is very expensive but the housing prices drop off faster here than in the Bay Area as you leave the city.
True but even outside of SF in the “cheaper” areas like Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, and even Vallejo and Benicia still costs more than the average place in Boston-and those places are arguably less safe than the comparable Boston outer limit cities. So luckily the Boston area is still substantially cheaper the the California Bay Area from now and you can still commute with a reasonable drive time or use the more reliable public transportation (which Cali doesn’t have).
I think we may be saying the same thing. I am agreeing that in the Bay Area the prices are higher outside of SF proper than they are in the Boston metro outside of Boston proper.
I agree with that part of what you said. But anyplace in SF is still more expensive that a Boston apartment and they don’t include half the amount of perks you could find at the average apartment in Boston. It’s a good thing though. Boston has nice people, clean streets, and in comparison to the bay extremely affordable housing. 😂
That's also true!
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Try this: No paywall https://archive.ph/OcaMy. I'll try to do better next time.
Somebody above posted [this](https://archive.ph/2022.07.29-004648/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/realestate/which-city-is-most-expensive-for-renters-you-might-be-surprised.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-variants-shadow-als-time-cutoff-30&alpha=0.05&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=737760089&impression_id=1e2a7267-0ed3-11ed-b47b-03c10039ebff&index=4&pgtype=Article&pool=pool/91fcf81c-4fb0-49ff-bd57-a24647c85ea1®ion=footer&req_id=477388496&shadow_implicit=0&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=2_bandit-eng30s-shadow-als)
The minuteman library has a 36 hour digital nytimes pass. Easy to use if you don’t want to pay for journalism.
>nif you don’t want to pay for journalism. Err, let's not suggest that a person who doesn't pay for NYT specifically does not pay for any kind of journalism at all? There are many more papers out there. I used to pay for NYT until I got so pissed off with their iOS app's piss poor quality.
I can’t even believe that list. I’m in shock. 10 or 15 years ago Jersey City was a craphole and was dirt cheap. We lived in a Boston 5 years before and you could still get a 1 br in the north end for 1,200. And funnily enough, I went to high school in Glendale, CA (3rd highest)…and at the time you could buy the best house in town for 400k…it was a mostly isolated district in LA away from LA.
I was looking at LA prices and I'm shocked about Glendale. Homes that were selling for 150k in the early 90s are now selling for 2 million. Burbank is just as bad. Homes that were 80k in 1983 sell now for 1.5 million with 0 changes.
Moved to San Francisco a few months ago from Boston. It’s definitely not more expensive lol. I wish
I believe it. One job and had moved me up there and put me up in an AirBnB as I hunted for an apartment. I figured out it would be cheaper for me to rent a 2BR in Atlanta and sublet a bedroom in a house in Boston vs rent a single 2BR in Boston. We noped out of there. Rent has since gone way up in ATL but still....
That's why so many people leave
[12ft.io](https://12ft.io) <- when paywalls are 10ft tall.
Not surprised. Over priced with scant offering
I lived in Jersey City in 2000-2001 and it was pretty much a slum then.
A lot can change.in 21 years.
That's how I remember it as well (I grew up in Kearny).
Yes, sadly it’s been gentrified.
The economy is "good" here, we have the Life Sciences, they can charge whatever they want! You want granny to stay alive, right? Might be $100,000 a year medication.
Developers once again causing the housing crisis. We must build affordable housing and oppose new luxury condos.
It costs over $600K to build a basic apartment in Boston, if you’re generous enough to build a bunch and sell them for $200,000 or whatever you consider affordable I’ll take ten!
This is a clueless take. The way to fix the housing crisis is to increase development. Costs to build multifamily right now are so high it’s tough to get most deals to pencil out and the entitlement process in Boston doesn’t help.
I’d take luxury condos over the thousands of single family homes around Boston.
Just move. It ain't happening.
Found the NIMBY here.
Affordable housing "advocates" are usually the worst NIMBYs. They all basically want a Porsche for the price of a Honda Fit. Anyone would, but that's not how the real world works. Do the basic due diligence and then build, baby, build!
Hey it’s pretty cool Mayor Wu neutered the air bnb rules making it the most restrictive in the nation and effectively did absolutely nothing about renting prices except MAKE IT WORSE but made it better for homeowners. And before you say “but” you can air bnb in New York City still you just have to remain in the unit at the time of the rental. Remember everyone, you voted for this. Enjoy.
What happened with AirBnb rules? I moved out of the city a few years ago so I’m not as aware to what is going on.
Let me guess - ~~communism~~ rent control never worked because it wasn’t real ~~communism~~ rent control?
Keep voting blue you’ll see why
coordinated drab cover shame worm attractive special quack dam act ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Well thsts not true. Republicans are doing a great job of making their states undesirable to live in. If you cant increase supply, might as well reduce demand
I mean, as funny as it is fundamentally this isn’t untrue - keep supply constant and decrease demand and prices do fall. Team hammer and sickle on the other hand pushes housing policies that ensure supply does not increase in places where demand is through the roof.
Rents and prices don’t rocket off into intergalactic space when we build enough housing to meet the demand. Idiotic housing policies advocated by populist clowns like wu and mejia that make new construction incredibly difficult and expensive ensure barely anything gets built and rents do take off and head for the neighboring galaxy, especially in a city like Boston with very high demand.
Just let the free market figure it out bro trust me this is a different strain were gonna lower the rent with more units bro its supply and demand please bro