Only 1 World City Charges More Than NYC Per Foot Of Apt Space

NEW YORK — It costs just $2.75 to get from Harlem to the Rockaways — but nearly twice that to buy a single square foot of apartment space in New York City, a recent study shows.

Renters must shell out $5.20 per square foot — almost the cost of two subway fares — for a Big Apple apartment, the second-highest price among the world's top 50 major cities, according to the Nov. 5 PropertyClub report.

That's up from $4.67 five years ago and second only to San Francisco, where apartments currently go for $5.75 per square foot, the real estate website says.

To put that in concrete terms, a New Yorker with $1,500 to spend on rent could only afford a 289-square-foot apartment at that rate — less than half Manhattan's average apartment size of roughly 700 square feet, according to PropertyClub.

But New York doesn't have it as bad as San Francisco, where renters can get a paltry 261 square feet at $1,500 a month, the study shows. That's down from 319 square feet in 2014, according to the report.

"The California city has become the main tech and innovation hub on the West Coast, and the surging supply in high-paying tech jobs has led to a surge in home prices and rents," PropertyClub writes.

PropertyClub's findings are based on A.T. Kearney's 2019 Global Cities Index and data from Numbeo, a worldwide cost-of-living database. The website says it calculated average rent for a one-bedroom apartment with a standard size of 600 square feet.

San Francisco also recently beat out the Big Apple for the dubious distinction of the U.S. city where it takes home-buyers the longest to save up for a property and buy it in full. Prospective buyers there would have to pinch pennies for 81 years to buy a house in 2017, compared to just 35 years in New York City, PropertyClub found last month.

Read PropertyClub's full report here.