[gen220]

Meanwhile, I know many people in NYC who spend ~60% of their post-tax income on rented housing.

Nobody is happy about it or thinks it's a good idea, but living further out is not perceived as a legitimate option because of the fear of being severed either socially or career-wise.

Whether that's a rational fear or not, it's a reality that allows housing prices to outpace wage gains every year. As somebody who used to think housing demand is fairly elastic: housing demand is much less elastic than you'd suspect.

[RhodesianHunter]

Yes, living in one of the, if not the, most desirable cities on the planet comes with additional costs.

[gen220]

NYC has been in that category for a long time.

The 60% of income on rented housing for people whose income would make them otherwise solidly middle class (to me, this definition includes ownership of real estate) is new.

Something else that's new: the prevalence of managing NYC properties through family trusts from a great distance while its members are domiciled and functionally unemployed in tax-shelter states. Hmm, I wonder if there's any explanatory power to that correlation?

[rangestransform]

NYC has incredibly incredibly low permitted additional housing per capita last year

[RhodesianHunter]

Hard to get much denser than NYC without massive capital expenditure.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Yes, living in one of the, if not the, most desirable cities on the planet comes with additional costs.

Being housed is highly desirable and has sharply driven up the cost in places where people are housed.

[RhodesianHunter]

Malibu, CA is very expensive to live in as well.