StreetEasy has compiled a list of the best neighborhoods for recent college grads by taking a peek at their own data and the New York State Department of Labor’s income statistics to find that Bushwick is the second best/most affordable neighborhood for college graduates.
Here are the top 5:
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Bushwick, Brooklyn Astoria, Queens Crown Heights, Brooklyn Washington Heights, Manhattan
These are the neighborhoods with the highest number of listings that a recent college grad making the median entry level income of $47,630 (?!?) can afford if they only spend 30 percent of their income, which is the fantasy amount someone once said was prudent to spend on housing.
But 30 percent of this median income is still $1,190, which doesn’t get you anything but a whole lot of roommates in Bushwick. StreetEasy confirms this with the distressing news that only 473 out of 111,518 (0.4 percent) studios or 1-bedroom listings available on StreetEasy in 2016 came in under that price point.
The median rental price in all of NYC, according to StreetEasy, is $2,795. So if a new grad wanted to live alone at that price and still responsibly spend only 30 percent of their income, they’d have to make well over $100,000 right out of the gate.
The report fails to mention one very important point: not all college grads are lucky enough to secure entry level employment in the field of their choosing right out of the gate, and without jobs, even the most “affordable” neighborhoods look to be pretty far out of reach.
And if you want to have your pick of neighborhoods, StreetEasy recommends you become a Nuclear Engineer.
Featured image by Roberto Nickson via Unsplash.
