FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM AUGUST 3, 2017 • THE QUEENS COURIER 11
Report: Harder for Queens residents to aff ord two-bedroom apts.
BY ANGELA MATUA
amatua@qns.com / @AngelaMatua
A new report by RentHop, a real estate
search engine, analyzed median rents of
two-bedroom apartments in 139 New York
City neighborhoods and found that only
nine were considered aff ordable.
Th e report compared the median rent of
a two-bedroom apartment and the median
income data for every neighborhood to
determine what areas are deemed aff ordable.
It is recommended that one should not
spend more than 30 percent of his or her
paycheck on rent. For the purposes of this
study, neighborhoods were considered
aff ordable if median asking rents could
be aff orded with 35 percent of a person’s
median income.
RentHop added an additional fi ve percent
to account for income growth that
has taken place since the latest Census was
released. Data from the city’s American
Community Survey was also used.
Two Queens neighborhoods made
the top of the most aff ordable and least
aff ordable lists. Not surprisingly, the
Queensbridge-Ravenswood-Long Island
City area topped the least aff ordable list.
Median rent for a two-bedroom apartment
is $3,300 but the median household
income is $28,378, which means that a
person must spend 139.5 percent of his or
her income for rent.
“Spending 139.5 percent of your income
on rent is not just absurd, it’s mathematically
impossible,” the report concluded.
Many Queens neighborhoods are deemed unaff ordable due to the large percentage of income residents must pay for rent.
Whitestone, where the household median
income is $80,546, is one of the city’s most
aff ordable neighborhoods. Th e median rent
for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,950 so a
potential tenant would spend 29 percent of
his or her paycheck on rent.
Four other Queens neighborhoods made
the most aff ordable list including Bayside,
Fresh Meadows, Douglaston and Middle
Village. Th e median income in these neighborhoods
is higher than the rest of the city —
$55,752, making the percentage of income
required for rent less than 35 percent.
Aft er Long Island City, Jamaica is the
next least aff ordable neighborhood in
Queens. Th e median household income
is $39,763 while the median rent for a
two-bedroom apartment is $2,562. To rent
an apartment in the area, one would have
to spend 77.3 percent of his or her check.
The Hunters Point-Sunnyside-West
Maspeth area followed by Flushing and
Rego Parkare also deemed unaff ordable. Of
the 40 Queens neighborhoods listed in the
study, only fi ve are considered aff ordable.
Overall, New York City has less aff ordable
apartments than other major U.S.
cities, including Miami, Los Angeles,
Chicago and Boston, which has the highest
percentage of aff ordable neighborhoods
of the fi ve included in the study.
Th e report concluded that developers who
Map courtesy of RentHop
are building many of the apartment listings
on RentHop are catering to people who are
willing to pay more to live in the city.
“Looking at our hundreds of thousands
of apartment listings we certainly notice a
trend: most apartments are being built and
advertised to the higher end of the market,
leaving a majority of people left wondering
how and where they’ll live,” said RentHop
Data Scientist Shane Leese, in the report.
“We encourage you to entertain all options
when fi nding a new apartment, including
having as many income-earners in the
household as possible and looking at apartments
with more bedrooms to bring down
the average cost per bedroom.”
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