StreetEasy Report Highlights Struggle To Find Affordable Apartment
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- New Yorkers know how hard it is to find an affordable apartment, but a new report is highlighting just how difficult the process is, especially when you're on a tight budget.
The real estate website StreetEasy puts out an affordability report every year.
Nancy Wu, an economist with StreetEasy, says this year, they focused on user behavior.
"We have a lot of data on how StreetEasy users search during the process in order to let us see where do people start looking, how do they change their budgets over time, and we often find that renters who start on a lower budget have to stretch their budgets a little bit more," Wu said.
Their data shows renters who have a budget below $2,700 oftentimes have to expand their budget throughout their search and renters who have a budget over $2,700 can oftentimes look for cheaper apartments throughout their search.
Wu says renters who have a lower budget tend to look in an area that's twice as wide compared to renters who have a higher budget.
"There's lots of options to find an affordable apartment, and renters will just have to be more flexible by taking on roommates or looking in neighborhoods that they haven't considered before or expanding their commute time," Wu said.
To read StreetEasy's full report, visit streeteasy.com/blog.