Inwood Is NYC's Only Affordable Neighborhood, Study Says

INWOOD, NY — Inwood was named New York City's only affordable neighborhood in a recent study conducted by real estate listing website StreetEasy.

In an effort to study the gap between city incomes and rents, StreetEasy compared borough-wide median incomes with median apartment rents in each Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens neighborhood. By defining "affordable" as rent that does not exceed 30 percent of a household's income, StreetEasy was able to determine how much money a renter would have to earn for each neighborhood to be affordable.

Inwood was the only neighborhood in the study where the annual household median income was greater than the neighborhood's required income, the StreetEasy report concluded. The Manhattan annual median income is nearly 6 percent higher than the needed household income of $73,000 in Inwood, according to the study. The study determined the median asking rent in Inwood is $1,825 per month.

While StreetEasy claims that Inwood is affordable, the numbers don't prove that the standard Inwood household isn't burdened by rent costs. The study's definition of affordable uses borough-wide median household incomes, which could be skewed by affluent neighborhoods such as TriBeCa and the Upper East Side.

After Inwood, the most affordable neighborhoods in Manhattan are Marble Hill and Washington Heights. Both Uptown Manhattan neighborhoods are technically unaffordable, with required incomes exceeding household median incomes. The required income in Marble Hill is 10.9 percent greater than the borough-wide median income and in Washington Heights it's 13.5 percent greater than the median income.

Read the full StreetEasy study here.

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