{"id":2249,"date":"2007-04-04T15:59:28","date_gmt":"2007-04-04T23:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/04\/the_shrinking_upper_middle_class_of_new_york_city.html"},"modified":"2007-04-04T15:59:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-04T23:59:28","slug":"the_shrinking_u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/04\/the_shrinking_u.html","title":{"rendered":"The Shrinking Upper Middle Class Of New York City"},"content":{"rendered":"

How unlikely is it that you’ll ever be able to afford real estate in Manhattan? Basically impossible<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Pity upper-middle-class Manhattanites. The average sales price of apartments here has spiked so extremely — tripling in the last decade to a record $1,295,445, according to a recent Prudential Douglas Elliman report — that only the most excessively well-heeled can become local owners.<\/p>\n

Dottie Herman is the president and C.E.O. of that massive Elliman brokerage, yet her betrothed niece can’t find a Manhattan apartment. “Her fianc\u00c3\u00a9 said to me, ‘Gee, I don’t think it’s fair: We’re both professionals, we both went to college, and we’re not going to be able to find something in Long Island,'” Ms. Herman said, “‘and we’re not going to be able to find something in the city.'”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

It’s uncouth to fret over rich people who can’t afford to buy a leafy Manhattan pad when there are over 30,000 New Yorkers living in shelters, and when the top-10th earners have the highest share of national income since pre-Depression America.<\/p>\n

And yet: Back in 1997, when the average annual wage here was about $59,200, the median co-op cost a wonderfully appropriate $196,000. According to the state Department of Labor, that wage stat only rose to $84,200 in 2005, when the median co-op cost $635,000.<\/p>\n

Last year, that median price blossomed by another $40,000.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

According to Ms. Herman, $150,000 per year is enough income to become an island homeowner. “It’s not going to be on Central Park South, but I’m sure you can find something in Murray Hill. You can find things — a one-bedroom, 700, 800 square feet.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, Upper West Side mortgage-broker Susan Gersh calculated that $130,000 is about the minimum income for a $600,000 apartment buyer with a 30-year mortgage — and 20 percent readily available up front for the down payment.<\/p>\n

Therefore, a prospective Manhattan homeowner not only needs to be among the top 10 percent of Americans in income, but also must have gobs of saved money, too.<\/p>\n

“If you have about $250 to $300 [thousand] in the bank, and you’re buying something that costs $600,000, you’re just there if you’re making a buck-fifty,” said associate Elliman broker Matt Gulker.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pied-a-terrible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How unlikely is it that you’ll ever be able to afford real estate in Manhattan? Basically impossible: Pity upper-middle-class Manhattanites. The average sales price of apartments here has spiked so extremely — tripling in the last decade to a record $1,295,445, according to a recent Prudential Douglas Elliman report — that only the most excessively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class_war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}