According to a new StreetEasy study that compared median income to median rents, Inwood is the last bastion of hope in a city where most tenants can’t technically afford their apartments.
In half of the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods surveyed, the income required to rent by most landlords — yes, the golden rule of earning 40 times the rent in a year — is about double what most tenants actually make. There’s only 11 neighborhoods where the median salary is within 15 percent of the required earning bracket, according to StreetEasy’s data.
Inwood is the only neighborhood where the income requirement of earning $73,000 per year is actually below what the average household makes.
The most expensive neighborhoods are Manhattan’s Central Park South, Tribeca and Upper Carnegie Hill neighborhoods where the required income is respectively 253 percent, almost 220 percent, and about 190 percent higher than what the average household actually earns in those areas.
— E.K. Hudson