Why Is It So Hard to Find an Apartment With Storage in NYC?
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It was early March when my wife and I saw a kind Apartment in Crown Heights: a renovation at a lower cost requiring more than $ 3,000 per month for A windowless living room, a tiny kitchen and two bedrooms which had barely enough space for a bed and a path to the door, even less a second bedside table. What struck me the most at the time, however, was that the owner had only attributed one Svelte closet for the whole unit. It was hidden in the corner of the largest room, and half of it was taken with a copper water heater. It was a scene that we met again and again in our research: a new mediocre development or a new, freshly cut building; tight subdivisions; and a pitiful quantity of storage. The type of apartment that practically guarantees a trip to the container store.
The city cupboards are still evolving. Dakota’s attempt in the 1880s to court the rich New Yorkers from their town halls by Clothing closet In each room, rather than the broken cupboards which were standard during this period, probably be considered small by modern requests. And at least in luxury development, post -recession (and post –Sex and city) closet made balloon in size. Thus, while today’s investment bankers, Google engineers and Instagram celebrities can always find a place with enough room to hide our business, the rest of us often finds themselves with little, often frustrating – a carved brownstone that has never had many closets to start, a new fashionable construction in Haste could have one or two. For a certain class of tenant at the moment, the trend is something like “bring your own wardrobe”, as Jonathan Miller, real estate assessor said.
Immobilier analysis and registration companies tell me that they have no data according to the flows and flows of the New York closet spaces. But a few things could happen at the same time: the Department of Housing and Development of the City Preservation has softened in recent decades, the requirement of the closet storage space for fishing for the construction of new constructions for the financing of the government. (In 2000, units of a room necessary Have a minimum of 19 square feet for clothing, coat and linen cupboards, but in 2016, this number had been cut At 12 square feet.) Apartments in new development rentals have also decreased overall: the median area in square feet for the rooms in Brooklyn and Manhattan dropped by around 9% between 2005 and 2024, according to the Urbandigs real estate data company. Given the crunch of space, Increased construction costsAnd the ever-increasing rents, developers can try to “maximize the number of units” and, ultimately, the priority for the “marketable” area in apartments to the detriment of the cupboards, explains the co-founder of Urbandigs, John Walkup.
What this compromise means for tenants who seek to pay $ 3,600 per month for a loft of a junior room in Stuyvevia heights Or $ 4,600 for a single terraced bed in Greenpoint is that the apparently bonus area in their living room will probably be occupied by an Ikea Pax system. “I entered some of our value rentals after being occupied, and we open the kitchen cupboards and see sweaters and jeans,” explains the architect Ariel Aufgang, whose company manages luxury developments as well as affordable and medium income housing. “People need storage. The amount we can build in New York in any package is retained by strict zoning laws, which does not allow graceful apartments. ”
Another thing that can be to eat our cupboards: the owners, apparently responding to the whims of the pandemic era and probably feeling an opportunity to invoice a bonus, have increasingly started to use them to house the unit Rings and dryers. So there is the other Building equipment that requires their own square area, both practical (gymnasiums, conference rooms) and on the top (virtual golf simulator, cinema). “The objective of many developers was home equipment to work and live in your space, and I think the closets may have been a little compromised,” said Anthony Morena, director of the Mortar Group firm. A potential tenant was so torn apart by the choice of an pre-war room with “tons” of closet space or a smaller and development apartment with a laundry room in the unit and a balcony that they Turned to Reddit for help. (“We would abandon a lot of space, but I will undoubtedly lean towards laundry in the unit”, they wrote.) Jason Haber, a real estate agent of the compass, is less conflict towards such a choice: “Closet Schmoset, give me the washer.”
Likewise, many tenants can be ready to do without a cupboard if all the rest of the place looks decent (or if they are not short of vapor of marathon’s views). Sam Raskin, a communications strategist, has left what he described as an aging and infested building in the prospect gardens – Leffets in 2021 for a brand new development at 15 minutes, “literally the new brilliant object,” he told me. The apartment of a bedroom on Clarkson avenue has a few things to do (central air, a huge terrace, no bugs), but its unit also has a clever-sister combo, leaving it a single usable closet. This is suitable, he said, “maybe five jackets.” To get out of it, he installed a club holdings in his room, one of which collapsed. “The New York housing crisis is that such serious people will take everything they can get and if the developers think they can get away, they are probably right,” he said. “It sucks for the rest of us.”
A tenant in a room in a new expensive building of Carroll Street has filled the vestibule outside of his apartment with a system of shelves to contain dozens of shoes and a foam roller, while typing the stairwell leading to the roof with a tower of plastic bins and suitcases, a folding chair and bags. (Okay, maybe some of us just need less things?)) Unique closet with so many shoes, bags, coats, suitcases and sheets that it could not close its doors. “As you can see, I go up outside,” she said, after making a pack of new Amazon shelves on the stairs. She noticed that the building has a high turnover, which it partially blame on the owner invoicing exorbitant rents for places that are at best. “They don’t take time or don’t think about these properties that are launched quickly,” she said. “I raised my bed. I built shelves. I should have space. “
Other private closet tenants have adopted a less congested approach to their homes. “People have their specialist Realreal on Speed Dial each season,” said Compass Phillip Salem broker. And for those who are not able (or do not want) to pay the monthly costs for the mini-storage of Manhattan or a cage in the basement of their building, there is always mom and dad. Do they want to hang on to this box of sweaters to the fall? “Many of my clients have family in New York or Long Island or New Jersey,” said Salem. There is also a TIKTOK SIDE To consult for storage ideas. “If you don’t have a closet space, that’s what you need to do”, a guru said As she weaves what seems to be Christmas decorations in her bed frame.
As for my own research, after spending two months checking the dark lists, we jumped on a pre-war room near Prospect Park. The space of 1,100 square feet had good light, cabinets on both sides of the kitchen of the kitchen and a room large enough for a bed, night shirts, And An office. The last thing that had ready to sign on the spot? Four cupboards.
