By Dana Schulz, Mon, August 14, 2017 Lead image © Daxiao Productions – Fotolio
6sqft’s ongoing series Apartment Living 101 is aimed at helping New Yorkers navigate the challenges of creating a happy home in the big city. This week, now that the city is in high renting season, we’ve researched the best resources for finding a no-fee apartment.
More than half of New Yorkers spend 30 percent or more of their income on rent. Tack on a broker’s fee that could be as high as 15 percent of an apartment’s annual rent, and that burden becomes even worse. Thankfully, there are more and more resources popping up to find no-fee rentals. Aside from the go-to listing aggregators, there’s now roommate-share options, lease break sites, artist-centric search engines, and good old fashioned networking. 6sqft has put together our 12 favorite options, along with the basics of each so you can figure out what will work best for you and how to prioritize your search.
Check out the full list here
By Devin Gannon, Fri, August 11, 2017 Los Angeles via Wikimedia
The East Coast versus West Coast rivalry may be slowly fading away. New Yorkers are making the cross-country leap from New York City to Los Angeles at a higher rate, in pursuit of cheaper rents, blossoming creative communities and, of course, all of that sunshine. According to LA Weekly, a new report by LinkedIn shows NYC as the top out-of-state feeder for LA transplants. For every 10,000 Angelenos on LinkedIn, about 7.3 of them just moved there from the Big Apple.
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By Cait Etherington, Wed, August 9, 2017 Image via CityRealty
You’ve landed a great job in New York City—then the reality of the city’s housing market starts to sink in. It’s a situation that thousands of new city residents face every year. New York City’s cost of living, which continues to outpace most other cities across North America, can make a move to the city seem difficult and even impossible. In fact, even highly compensated professionals often balk at the idea of relocating due to the fact that it typically means radically adjusting one’s established standard of living. After all, most adults assume it is normal to have more than one closet and expect their kitchen to be large enough to accommodate more than one person at a time. This is why at least some local employers throw in the most coveted perk of all—free or at least steeply discounted housing.
find out where these jobs are
By Michelle Cohen, Mon, August 7, 2017 Image: Pexels
6sqft recently reported on a forecast by online real estate marketplace Ten-X predicting a precipitous threefold spike in New York City’s apartment vacancy rate that could even exceed 11 percent by the end of next year as thousands of new apartments hit the market, adding up to a “grim reckoning” for landlords. Now, a Crains reporter tells us that skeptics like marketing-consultant-to-developers Nancy Packes, who said the prognostication of a rental market meltdown “didn’t make any sense,” could be right after all.
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By Michelle Cohen, Wed, August 2, 2017 Image: Pexels
A new forecast by online real estate marketplace Ten-X predicts that New York City’s apartment vacancy rate will exceed 11 percent by the end of next year as thousands of apartments hit the market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The study also points to a slowing job growth rate, which drives the rental market, as a factor in what could be a “grim reckoning” for landlords.
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By Devin Gannon, Thu, July 27, 2017 All Saints Church in Harlem, via NYC & Company
The Archdiocese of New York announced that 12 Catholic churches in Manhattan and The Bronx may be sold after declaring them no longer sacred sites for worship. As DNAinfo reported, the Catholic church released a list of properties, including some that had been shuttered since around 2015 when the church restructured many of its parishes by merging many together. After the diocese quietly posted the decrees over the July Fourth holiday weekend, many parishioners were angry that they had less time to appeal. Now some fear the churches will be converted luxury housing building, which has happened many times in the past few years due to the financial pressure on churches.
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By Cait Etherington, Mon, July 24, 2017 Image via WikiCommons
6sqft’s ongoing series Apartment Living 101 is aimed at helping New Yorkers navigate the challenges of creating a happy home in the big city. This week, we cover everything you need to consider when raising chickens in the city.
In a city where simply finding a balcony large enough for a pot of basil can be a challenge, one may be surprised to discover that chicken coops can be found across all five boroughs. Chickens were once primarily kept by older city residents, including many who come from places in the world where a backyard supply of fresh eggs is taken for granted. More recently, everyone from Park Slope housewives to Bushwick hipsters appears to be embracing the backyard chicken craze.
More on Raising City Chickens
By Devin Gannon, Thu, July 13, 2017 Image via Kid Monkey for the Bushwick Collective
According to a new analysis by the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), the number of artists in New York City has grown in almost every discipline, borough and neighborhood between 2000 and 2015. Citywide, the number of artists has increased by an all-time high of 17.4 percent, to 56,268 as of 2015. Since 2000, the Bronx saw the number of visual and performing artists nearly double, to 2,920 from 1,524, while Manhattan saw a decline of 10 percent, from 28,454 artists to 25,650. On the other hand, Brooklyn grew 72 percent to 17,605, Queens grew at 35 percent to 8,726 and Staten Island experienced an 8 percent growth to total 1,367 in 2015.
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By Cait Etherington, Mon, July 10, 2017 New York is home to dozens of distinct neighborhoods with their own names, identities, and histories. Some of these neighborhoods acquired their names by misfortune (Hell’s Kitchen gained its moniker due to its tough reputation), others by function (the Battery was once home to a series of artillery batteries), and some were coined by local artists playing with abbreviated combinations (SoHo is likely the most well-known example). However, at least some New York City neighborhoods, including the East Village and NoLita, were created by real estate agents in an attempt to “rebrand” areas that historically had a reputation for being either undesirable or simply boring places to live. Increasingly, this now well-established practice is coming under attack and if one local state senator is successful, the practice may even soon be illegal.
read more here
By Devin Gannon, Wed, June 28, 2017 In 2016, the New York Metro Area was home to the highest number of “ultra-wealthy” residents in the world. A new report shows about 8,350 residents with a net worth of at least $30 million called the Big Apple their home last year, an increase of about 9 percent from last year. When focusing on just the five boroughs, most of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods can be found in Manhattan, as Curbed NY discovered. Taking this year’s title as the richest NYC enclave? The Upper East Side.
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