<p>Here are exerpts from one more article about the cost of housing in Manhattan from the New York Times. I hope that you will find it informative!</p>
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New York City Renters Cope With Squeeze
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As the apartment-hunting season begins, fueled by college graduates and other new arrivals, real estate brokers say radical solutions among young, well-educated newcomers to the city are becoming more common, because New Yorks rental market is the tightest it has been in seven years. High-paid bankers and corporate lawyers snap up the few available apartments, often leading more modestly paid professionals and students to resort to desperate measures to find homes.
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While young people in New York have always sought roommates to make life more affordable, they are now crowding so tightly into doorman buildings in prime neighborhoods like the Upper East Side that they may violate city codes. They are doing so in part because the vacancy rate for Manhattan rentals is now estimated at 3.7 percent, according to data collected by Property and Portfolio Research, an independent real estate research and advisory firm in Boston. It is expected to shrink to 3.3 percent by the end of this year and to 2.9 percent by 2011.
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Its only going to get more difficult to rent an apartment in New York City, said Andy Joynt, a real estate economist with the research firm. While rents continue to rise, its not sending people out of the city. Theres still enough of a cachet, he said.
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While New York City has always had a vacancy rate lower than most other cities, rental prices jumped last year by a record 8.3 percent. Some potential buyers, scared by the national slowdown in housing sales, decided to rent instead of buy. The housing crunch has also been exacerbated by the steady growth of newcomers.
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Theres going to be limited inventory and a lot of demand, Mr. Kotler said. There just hasnt been enough rental product built, he said, as, developers have said that the price of land and the costs of construction in the last few years have made it impractical to build rental buildings. They have instead focused on condominiums.
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Renters without high salaries have not been shut out of the market. They are squeezing in extra roommates or making alterations as never before much to the frustration of landlords. The rents for one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan average $2,567 a month, and two-bedrooms average $3,854 a month, according to data from Citi Habitats, a large rental brokerage company, but rents tend to be far higher in coveted neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and TriBeCa.
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. . . [L]andlords typically require renters to earn 40 times their monthly rent in annual income . . .
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But more renters are finding that they cannot afford to stay in the city without resorting to less conventional living arrangements.
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To accommodate everyone, the roommates created five bedrooms out of three by building walls from drywall and lumber. Then they soundproofed the walls with carpet padding to limit the noise.
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She says she is hopeful that they will eventually find something in Brooklyn, perhaps in the outer reaches of Park Slope. Were definitely going to have to expand our definition of Park Slope, she said.
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