Living with roommates is saving some New Yorkers over $25,000

by Tom

We've released a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown of annual savings for renters in NYC

Here at SpareRoom, we're constantly looking at current housing and rental trends. In this post we look into how much you can save each year by living with a roommate over living in a 1-bed apartment in areas around NYC.

When we compared the average cost per room rent price over the last year vs. the average cost per one bedroom, we found that if you choose to be a roommate, you can save as much as $25,000 per year compared to your neighbors that are living alone.

In TriBeCa, renters are saving over $25K per year by renting with roommates when compared with the average price of a 1-bed apartment in the same area.₃ In Gramercy, SoHo, Chelsea, Greenwich Village and FiDi you can save over $20,000 per year.

Washington Heights offers the lowest saving if you moved from a 1-bed to having a roommate, however you'd still save over $10,000 per year.

Popular areas of Brooklyn also show the same trend, with Williamsburg and Downtown Brooklyn saving you just under $20,000 per year when moving to having a roommate from renting a 1-bed apartment.

We also conducted a recent survey of over 6k people where we discovered that 91% of New Yorkers living with roommates say they share an apartment because of the financial benefits.₁

Just under half (48%) of the people we surveyed said sharing means they can live in a better apartment and over one third (34%) say they can live in a better neighborhood if they live with roommates.₁

Almost two thirds of those asked (62%) say they rent with a roommate because they can’t afford rent on their own.₁

1 in 3 New Yorkers say 50% or more of their salary is going on rent alone. 1 in 8 (12%) Manhattannites admit they pay out a sum on rent that amounts to two thirds of their salaries (66%).₁

According to the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), Americans who spend more than 30% of their net income on rent are considered to be rent burdened.₂

More about SpareRoom

SpareRoom, the trusted platform helping people seamlessly find the perfect roommate, launched across the US in 2016 and has so far helped over three quarters of a million people find a room or a roommate.

Every ad is moderated and SpareRoom also runs weekly Speed Roommating events in NYC, where roommates can meet face to face in a safe environment.

SpareRoom also runs Live Rent Free - a monthly contest which offers the chance for one lucky person to win their rent free for a month. This amount is also matched and donated to leading homeless charity, Breaking Ground. To date SpareRoom has donated over $55,000.

SpareRoom is available online and also in the Apple and Android app stores.

Footnotes

₁SpareRoom’s survey of 6,000+ roommates, February 2019
₂https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/affordablehousing/
₃Mean cost per room on SpareRoom listings vs. median cost per 1 BR on Zumper.com (www.spareroom.link/zumper), February 2019