You need to make $108,092 a year to live comfortably in D.C., report says

Another week, another breathless report showing how darn expensive and wealthy D.C. is. Last week, we reported that D.C. ranked 10th in the most millionaires in the country per capita category when compared with states. (Maryland had the most, and Virginia came in at No. 6.)

This week, a report from Cheat Sheet says D.C. has the third-highest percentage of households earning at least $150,000 a year among cities with at least 500,000 people. San Francisco and San Jose ranked first and second, respectively.

Cheat Sheet then determined how much a household would need to earn a year in order to live “comfortably.” The report used $75,000 as the “magic salary number” based on a 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study indicating that someone’s day-to-day emotional well-being doesn’t increase after a household income hits the $75,000 threshold. Cheat Sheet then adjusted that income level up or down using a cost-of-living calculator and comparing each city to Phoenix — “a city with a moderate cost of living and a median income that’s close to the national average.”

From there, it concluded a person would need $108,092 to live comfortably in D.C. (Note: The report indicates an individual would need this amount to live comfortably, while the 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study determined that $75,000 was the amount of money a household needs to hit the happiness threshold.)

Here’s how the cost of comfortable living in D.C. compares with the other most expensive locations.

Source

Study shows that most people do not understand basic financial concepts

AP/Gerald Hebert

In The Atlantic, Moisés Naím points to a recent study that poses three simple questions on personal finance:

1. Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2 percent per year. After five years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow? A) more than $102; B) exactly $102; C) less than $102; D) do not know; refuse to answer.

2. Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account is 1 percent per year and inflation is 2 percent per year. After one year, would you be able to buy A) more than, B) exactly the same as, or C) less than today with the money in this account?; D) do not know; refuse to answer.

3. Do you think that the following statement is true or false? "Buying a single company stock usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund." A) true; B) false; C) do not know; refuse to answer. [The Atlantic]

These questions were asked to people around the world, and the correct answers are A, C, and B. Did you get them all right? If you did — congratulations, you understand the basics of how interest rates, inflation, and portfolio diversification work. Most people surveyed around the world didn't.

In Russia, 96 percent of those surveyed failed to answer the three questions correctly. In the U.S., 70 percent failed. The highest performing countries were Germany where 47 percent failed and Switzerland, where 50 percent did. But this isn't rocket science. The questions reflected basic financial concepts that are essential for saving for the future, using credit cards, taking on a student loan, purchasing a home, investing, and building up a pension.

Worse than this, Americans also showed overconfidence in their abilities. Asked to rank their financial knowledge on a scale of 1 (very low) to 7 (very high), 70 percent of Americans surveyed ranked themselves at level 4 or higher. Yet only 30 percent answered the questions correctly.

These surveys provide some pretty scary food for thought, because uninformed, overconfident people are more prone to make bad decisions that endanger their own financial health and the wider economy. As this paper from the World Bank shows, individuals who are financially literate have better financial situations.

One key aspect of the 2008 financial crisis was individuals taking out loans and mortgages that they couldn't afford to pay back. Now, it's true that lenders were also culpable — they were lending this money, and then selling the debt to a greater fool, which was irresponsible and dangerous, if not illegal. But how many of the bad subprime mortgages that triggered the 2008 crisis were taken on by people who didn't understand what they were getting themselves into? Given that nobody wants to end up bankrupt and have his or her home repossessed, it's safe to conclude an awful lot. As early as 2008 John Bryant, the vice chairman of President Bush's financial literacy councilargued: "Take the greed and the financial misrepresentation out of it, and the root of this crisis is massive financial illiteracy."

Every time the specter of financial illiteracy raises its head on the national stage, the widespread reaction tends to be to demand more spending on and resources for financial education, for example by including household finance in the basic high school curriculum. If the problem is lack of knowledge, give them more knowledge. But, as the economist Richard Thaler argues in The New York Times, it's not as easy as that. Thaler points to a 2013 paper that concluded that those who receive financial education do not perform noticeably better when it comes to saving a higher proportion of their income, or avoiding ruinously large debt. Additionally, the results of efforts to increase financial literacy aimed at low-income people are particularly weak.

And it's not like the rollout of nationwide economics and financial education has eliminated financial illiteracy, or even reduced it to world-leading levels. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2008, 9 out of 10 high school students were exposed to some economics education, up from 1 in 4 in 1982. And 17 states now require students to take an economics course to graduate, up from 13 states in 1998. Yet financial illiteracy still plagues us.

What gives? Well, how much high school level chemistry do you remember? Probably not a lot if you don't work in chemical engineering, or as a high school chemistry teacher, or in a related field like medicine. I remember dropping potassium into water and watching the explosive reaction, and little else. Point being that lessons delivered in an abstract way in high school tend to just not stick, especially if students don't realize its importance in later life. People memorize for exams, and forget afterward.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we should give up on financial education. Some like Thaler argue that instead of delivering it in school where its relevance may not immediately be apparent, financial education could be delivered at the point it is needed.

I'd go one step further, and suggest financial licensing. People wanting to take out a mortgage or get a credit card or a loan would face compulsory basic finance literacy testing. You can't get a mortgage unless you can demonstrate you understand how interest payments, inflation, and other basic financial concepts work. If access to financial services depended on financial literacy, financial literacy rates would shoot up.

After all, we demand that road users demonstrate their competence behind the wheel. Why not demand that mortgage and credit card users demonstrate their financial literacy as well? A "financial license" might be a pain to busy people trying to get a mortgage or loan or credit card. And obviously, this won't stop all irresponsible lending and borrowing — just as a driver's license doesn't stop all dangerous driving. But on the other hand, if it reduces delinquency and repossession, it could save a lot of people a lot of misery and, perhaps most importantly, prevent banks from taking advantage of people's ignorance.

And it might even prevent a few financial crises.

Source

The worst cities to live in for renters

The housing market is supposedly recovering, yet the homeownership rate is dropping. Meanwhile rents in urban areas were already high but now are absolutely skyrocketing. What’s going on? As millions lost their homes many of the houses were and are being bought up by large investors. And what do these investors want? They want rent and lots of it. According to a NY Times report, In Many Cities, Rent Is Rising Out of Reach of Middle Class, “In December, Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan declared ‘the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has ever known.’ ”

Since the Great Recession the squeeze on 99% of us has gotten much tighter. What does this mean for people looking for a place to live? People used to be able to buy a house and put down roots. But in most cities buying a house is just out of the question for most people. Prices are back up and climbing fast, while salaries and wages for most of us are stagnant if not falling. So coming up with a down payment and qualifying for a mortgage is beyond the reach of many city-dwellers.

And now already-strapped home-buyers are competing with the big money. Many of the houses that come up for sale are sold in “all cash” deals, which means regular people are competing with “investors.” Because these investors pay cash sellers know they don’t have to wait for a buyer to get approved for a mortgage that could fall through.

In The Coming Nightmare of Wall Street-Controlled Rental Markets, Rebecca Burns, Michael Donley and Carmilla Manzanet of In These Times explain that investors have already purchased around 200,000 single-family houses to convert into rentals. And even as the “recovery” takes hold, they write, “In the final months of 2013, the rate of homeownership dipped to an 18-year low of 65.2 percent, down from a 69.4 percent peak prior to the 2007 financial crisis, according to U.S. Census data.” These houses are not going to homeownership, they are being turned into rentals – to be rented back to the people who used to live in them. According to Stan Humphries, the chief economist of Zillow, between 2007 and 2013 the United States added, on net, about 6.2 million tenants, compared with 208,000 homeowners.

With Wall Street as your landlord things can only go one way. As rents rise you face eviction so they can move someone in who will pay more – especially in areas where tenants have been able to get rent control ordinances passed. Bloomberg News gives an example of a community facing an eviction assault. In the story, In Silicon Valley, a New Investment: Eviction, Bloomberg describes how one company now owns 70% of the apartments in East Palo Alto and is systematically evicting tenants in rent-controlled units, writing, “Equity Residential has filed 236 unlawful detainer, or eviction, cases that have been unsealed in San Mateo County Superior Court since December 2011, according to the court website. At least 160 cases -- or 68 percent -- ended with a writ of possession of real property, giving the tenant 24 hours to move out.”

So with home-buying out of the question in many cities rents are high and climbing fast. Especially if you want to rent a house instead of an apartment. Renting an apartment or a house brings different stresses because apartments are built to be rented, while houses can be sold and you have to move. In expensive (bubble?) places like Silicon Valley people who are lucky enough to find a house to rent (typically $3,000+ a month) live in fear that the owner will sell and boot them, or drastically increase the rent.

What does all of this mean for working people looking for a place to live? It depends on where you are. CBS News reports, “Although the average rent across the U.S. is $1,231 per month, in certain areas it can be triple that number.” What are the worst places in the country for renters? There are some considerations for looking into the worst cities to rent. It is not just which city has the highest rents, it also matters what the percent of median household income this represents – if you make the median income for the area. It costs more to live in Beverly Hills, but people who live in Beverly Hills generally make enough to afford it.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition Los Angeles is the “least affordable” big city because median rent now makes up 47 percent of median income, but it isn’t one of the 5 highest rent areas. It’s least affordable because so many people have low incomes. And Miami is next on the “least affordable” list because median rent makes up 43.2 percent of median income. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies also looked at what percent of their income renters are spending in various area and found that nationally half of all renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. This is up from 38 percent of renters in 2000.

Of course, this doesn’t matter to a person making the minimum wage. The National Low Income Housing Coalition looked at how many hours minimum-wage employees have to work per week in each state just to rent an apartment and still be able to survive. (See this chart.) West Virginia was lowest at 63 hours. Hawaii was 175 hours. California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C. were all over 130 hours.

So using a number of sources, here is a list of 5 cities with shockingly high rents.

#1 Williston, North Dakota
Why Williston? It is located right in the middle of the “oil boom” and as a result has some of the highest rents in the country. According to Courtney Craig at the Apartment Guide blog, “A 700-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath apartment in Williston easily can cost more than $2,000 per month. Looking for a little more space? A three-bedroom, three-bath apartment could cost as much as $4,500 per month.”

The reason for the high rents is more of a reflection on how bad things are in the rest of the country than how good things are in Williston. People are hurting for good-paying jobs and for a while there was so much work available that people flocked to Williston. The population grew from 14,700 in 2010 to more than 30,000 now, and the housing stock is used up. But so are the jobs. So with few jobs and even fewer places to live Williston is having problems. A recent Wall Street Journal story told of how “Jay Jones, a 25-year-old pipe fitter from Virginia, arrived in Williston last July in his 1993 Buick Century with a makeshift bed he installed in place of the back seats. He stayed in his car until October, when temperatures started to drop.” According to a local KFYR report, “Currently, Williston Public School District #1 has 133 homeless students.” And a recent FOX headline says even more: Dark side of ND's oil boom: Meth, heroin, cartels _ all part of growing drug trade.

#2 is San Francisco, Silicon Valley and San Jose
Census Bureau numbers from 2010 to 2012 show that San Francisco’s median rent was $1,463 and this holds all the way down to San Jose, with a median rent of $1,441. That means that half of the housing – almost all of which is occupied by longer-term tenants with rent control -- are rented for $1,463 or less, and half – the only places you will see on the market -- for more; often for much, much more. (Note that CNN reported in February that San Francisco has seen rents rise 12.3 percent year-over-year through January to a median average of $3,350 for a two-bedroom apartment. “An apartment in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood that rented for $2,100 in 2010, for example, now rents for $3,200 a month...”)

But median pay is higher in the city itself. 37.6 percent of rentals in San Francisco go for 35 percent or more of household income. As you go south this changes. In San Jose it is 43.8 percent of rentals going for more than 35 percent or more if household income. (The earlier-mentioned CBS report says the median San Jose studio apartment is $1,455 and the median two-bedroom apartment is $2,350.)

Part of the problem is that San Francisco itself has a very limited area for housing. Surrounded on three sides by water there’s only so much land to use. So if more housing is to be built it has to be in buildings that go upward – mid- to hi-rise. But the city has zoned most of the land to prohibit buildings taller than 40 feet! As a result most of the new housing is luxury housing for the wealthy that will bring the builder top dollar. One problem is landlords evicting lower-income apartment dwellers so they can turn the buildings into condominiums for higher-income people. According to a Reuters report, “evictions in the city jumped 25 percent to 1,716 in the year ended February 2013, according to a report by San Francisco's budget and legislative analyst.”

The result of these high -- and rapidly increasing – rents is social disruption. Well-paid Silicon Valley tech employees come to the city to live in hip neighborhoods, causing rents to skyrocket (never mind buying). People of more modest means are being pushed out, and they are not happy. People have been protesting what are called “Google buses.” These are plush, usually-white buses companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other tech companies provide for their own employees to get to work. Meanwhile these and similar companies are famous for dodging their taxes, leaving cities and regions with little ability to upgrade transportation infrastructure or address larger social problems.

#3 Boston
According to the same Census Bureau survey of 2010-2012 Boston’s median rent is $1,260 per month (CBS: Median studio apartment: $2,000, median two-bedroom apartment: $3,505.)

Boston’s “Long-time insider” Mark Pearlstein explains the market, saying, “Rents are at an all-time high, as are sales prices. And I'm starting to see greed by all the property owners who are really trying to push the rents even higher.”

Bobby Sisk reports at WBZ-TV, in Future Of Boston: Expensive Housing Market Puts Squeeze On Workers, that “For many families, finding an affordable place to live is a struggle, whether buying or renting.” People are “moving farther and farther outside the city because it’s getting too pricey.”

#4 Washington, D.C.
Washington, DC’s median rent is $1,236 (Census Bureau 2010-2012) -- 40.7 percent of median household income. (CBS: median studio apartment: $1,675, median two-bedroom apartment: $3,110.) It would take a wage of $28.25 an hour to support a modest 2-bedroom home in DC.

Rents are so high and have been rising so fast in DC that it has inspired a group ofcandidates to run on the “The Rent Is Too Darn High” slate for D.C. mayor and the Democratic State Committee. The reason this committee matters is that DC is fighting to become a state so they can be represented in Congress. Republicans just oppose giving DC statehood because a large percent of the population is black and votes Democratic, states get two senators and Republicans don’t want two more Democrats in the Senate. The idea is to get DC statehood into the national Democratic Party platform.

Petula Dvorak at the Washington Post explains in D.C.: A city divided and increasingly unaffordable,

“We never could’ve imagined, 20 years ago, that this would be an issue, that the city would be too expensive to live in,” said Sekou Biddle, a former D.C. Council member who ran on the Rent slate and won a seat as the at-large member of the Democratic State Committee.

Her column notes that DC has lost half of its affordable housing units in the past decade. “Meanwhile, all those fancy high-rises we see going up are increasingly unaffordable for the new folks moving in and making decent salaries.”

#5 New York
It is so notoriously hard to find a place to rent in Manhattan that the joke goes, “I’m so sorry to hear about Mr. Collins. Does that mean his apartment is available?” And the frequently-heard 1%’er complaint is, “You Try to Live on 500K in This Town.”

But even for all of New York City -- not just Manhattan -- Census Bureau 2010-2012 puts the city at #5 with median rent at $1,187 and for a studio apartment: $2,300.

Like San Francisco there is little room in the New York area to build new housing, except up. And much of the new housing going up is targeted toward the luxury market that can afford to pay much higher prices. (See Ain't Nothin' Going On but the Rent: In NYC, $100 Million Apartments Are a Thing.) As a result rents are skyrocketing but New York City has rent control, allowing people to remain in their (rented) homes with reasonable rent increases. But as “market rate” rents increase dramatically landlords have been raising the stakes to get people to move out so they can charge more. There are reports of landlords destroying their own apartments in an effort to get tenants out. There is a bill before the NY state legislature making this kind of “rent sabotage” a crime.

According to a recent NY Times story, “New York’s new Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to expand the number of homes affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers to ease the housing crunch. But tenant advocates say that, in order to make a dent, the mayor must also focus on the loss of affordable apartments.” “The mayor has also promised to set up a fund to help tenants, most of whom go to housing court without lawyers, fight landlord wrongdoing.” De Blasio has also pledged to create 200,000 new homes for low- to moderate-income New Yorkers within 10 years.

In America you’re all set if you have a lot of money. People with a lot of money (the 1%) “own” almost everything. They have “property rights.” The rest of us have to pay them to let us use the things they own, like a place to live. The payment for those things is called “rent.” We even have to rent the money to buy things – for example mortgages, car loans, credit cards, etc.

But all is not lost Detroit is having an art boom and the rent is low. The average two-bedroom rental in the Detroit/Ann Arbor/Flint area goes for $843. Flint, Michigan’s median house sellsfor a little over $40,000.

Source

Infamous crime houses for sale

The Colorado home of JonBenet Ramsey is on the market again. From Amanda Knox's Perugia house to Jeffery Dahmer's childhood home, some murder houses are perpetually on sale—while others have made a real estate killing.

For $1.9 million, you could be the proud owner of a 7,240-square-foot, five-bedroom renovated 1920s home in one of Boulder, Colorado’s most desirable neighborhoods. The catch? The basement of this dream home is where six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in 1996. Still interested?

Despite the Bernardi Real Estate Group’s efforts to promote its “grand rooms, great light” and “elegance of past generations combined with modern updates,” the Ramsey estate clearly seems to be suffering from a textbook case of Haunted House Syndrome. JonBenet’s parents, who vacated immediately after the young pageant winner’s body was discovered, sold the house to investors for $650,000 in 1998. In 2004, televangelist Robert Schuller’s daughter, Carol Schuller Milner, and her husband Tim Milner, bought the place for $1.05 million, but it’s been on and off the market several times since then.

Whether or not they’re actually possessed, so-called “murder houses” can be the bane of a real estate agent’s existence. They’re often severely under-priced (unless their murders are fictional), impossible to sell and even harder to keep off the market—despite being a serious bargain for anyone who can get past their sordid backstory. Occasionally, realtors manage to avoid revealing the secrets of lesser-known houses, leaving their clients to learn of their new home’s horrific history after the deed has been signed. But, like the Ramsey house, the scenes of famous crimes that captured national headlines are often doomed to be haunted by the ghosts of murders past.
You’d never guess from the real-estate listing that this “charming Georgetown townhouse with three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms” was the site of one of the strangest murders in recent history.

The Yates' Family Spanish-Style Hacienda
It’s not hard to believe that the three-bedroom house at 942 Beachcomber Lane in Houston where Andrea Yates drowned her five children in 2001 became a neighborhood spectacle. Still, Peter Muller considered the 1,620-square-foot house, located near several schools and hospital, to be a steal at $87,000 when he bought it in 2004. “I don’t really care about [the home’s] history...It doesn’t really bother me,” Muller told AOL Real Estate in 2012, insisting then that he had no plans to move any time soon.

The Von Bulow Mansion
The curious case of Martha “Sunny” von Bulow captured the nation’s attention for the better part of the 1980s. At the beginning of the decade, the American heiress was found unconscious on the bathroom floor of her Newport, Rhode Island mansion. Von Bulow’s socialite husband, Claus, was convicted and then acquitted of trying to kill his hypoglycemic wife with insulin injections. In 2008, Sunny von Bulow died at 76, after almost 28 years in a coma. In 2012, the 7.2 acre estate on Newport’s famed Cliff Walk where she entered her twilight state was sold to an anonymous buyer for the record price of $13.1 million.
The house were JonBenet Ramsey was murdered has been sold to Tim and Carol Milner. (Andy Cross/Getty)

Amanda Knox’s Perugia House
The picturesque Perugia house where British student Meredith Kercher was brutally killed in 2007 is recognizable to anyone who followed the murder trial of Kercher’s American roommate, Amanda Knox. In January, the stucco converted farm building, divided into two apartments, went on the market for $500,000. At the time, the real-estate agent tasked with selling the now-infamous house was not optimistic. “It is obviously a property with a difficult history,” he told The Daily Beast. “Those types of houses are never easy to sell.” Concerned that the sale might inviting curious sightseers, the owners are also considering selling the property as a bed and breakfast or an office space. If it doesn’t sell, though, the scene of Meredith Kercher’s murder will likely be torn down.

Murdered Socialite’s Georgetown Townhouse
You’d never guess from the real-estate listing for 3206 Q St. Northwest, that this “charming Georgetown townhouse with three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms” was the site of one of the strangest murders in recent history. Even before the then-47-year-old Albrecht Muth was charged with strangling and beating his 91-year-old socialist wife to death in 2011, Viola Drath’s marriage to an Iraqi general-impersonating pretend “Count” 44 years her junior was the stuff of high-society lore. In January of this year, after delaying his trial with a hunger strike, Muth was convicted of first degre- murder. The rowhouse where Drath’s body was found is still on the market for $1.6 million.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s Childhood Home
“I didn’t stop shaking for another 24 hours,” musician Chris Butler told the Akron Beacon Journal of his reaction when he found out that the ridiculously cheap, three-bedroom, 1950s-style Ohio house he thought would be perfect for rehearsing with his bandmates was the childhood home of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who raped and murdered 17 men and boys before he was arrested in 1991. Butler got over it, though, and bought the house anyway and even moved his mother into the place where Dahmer killed his first victim. Despite saying “I love, love, love the place,” he put the 2,170-square-foot house on the market for $329,000 in 2012 to move closer to his son in New Jersey.

Source

Bargain living in America's priciest cities

You can't afford Manhattan. Probably you can't afford Brooklyn, either. But listen up: Wherever there's a big city that everybody dreams of living in, there is an alternative that gives a savvy renter all the benefits of the city at maybe half the cost.

The same frugal magic can be worked in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston -- in fact, just about anywhere that rents are sky-high. The keys: Demand good rapid transit links to the brightest lights in the big city, and also look for a rebounding neighborhood that may be a tad too gritty for the monied set.

Skeptical that this formula delivers housing bliss? Tune into the latest numbers from New York, compiled by Realtor Douglas Elliman, which puts the average Manhattan rental at $3,822 and, oh, if you aspire to a prime neighborhood like Tribeca, be ready to plunk down substantially more dough.

Brooklyn rents in the trendy north and northwest sections - Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill - are closing in on those in Manhattan. The Douglas Elliman July numbers for Brooklyn put the average at $3,035.

Do the math. That Brooklyn renter needs to be pulling in over $100,000 annually for many landlords to be willing to extend a lease.

The antidote: Cross the Hudson River into Jersey City and spend under $2,500 for a spacious one bedroom apartment in a newer building, very possibly under $2,000 in an older building downtown, perhaps in a restored brownstone, with convenient access to the PATH subway system that transports Jersey City residents to the World Trade Center on Wall Street in a couple minutes. Trips to 33rd and Sixth Avenue take maybe 20 minutes.

The town's new mayor, 36-year-old Steven Fulop, has announced his "Across the River" campaign to woo New Yorkers to live on the other side of the Hudson.

There are no restaurants or bars in Jersey City? There aren't many, admittedly, but that same PATH train runs 24/7, meaning Manhattan's night life is a quick ride away.

Chicago is your kind of town? Prime downtown neighborhoods are packed with one-bedroom apartments renting for $2,000 to $2,500 per month. So dollar conscious hipsters are heading to Logan Square, where Homescout Realty marketing intern Alexandra Wolf said large one bedrooms can be had for $1,300 to $1,400. It's about five miles from the Loop, maybe 15 minutes on the L train, and it's a neighborhood characterized by stately historical boulevards. To boot, it's now starting to show up on lists of the nation's hottest neighborhoods. Bonus point: Logan Square is home to Hot Doug's, revered by many as the nation's best purveyor of exotic sausages, like the 'Brigitte Bardot' ("hot, hot, hot").

Have $2,500 to spend on rent? If so, you can move right into Los Angeles's trendy Venice Beach or Marina del Rey, where your neighbors all drive newer Teslas or Priuses and will shun you if you motor in with the wrong wheels. Add the car to the rent, and you are left out of the equation?

Head to NoHo, the once dowdy North Hollywood, now riding high as a reborn arts district, and there even is a subway stop on Los Angeles's Red Line, which connects downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood and NoHo. There are many art galleries, dozens of live theater companies and Hollywood studios nearby, and it's an area filled with mid-century ranch homes and modestly priced low-rise apartment complexes.

Expect to pay under $1,500 for a well-located one bedroom and, did we mention, off-street parking will be free and NoHo is not known for snobbishness about car marques.

Don't go looking for an apartment on the cheap in any of Boston's trendy neighborhoods such as Back Bay, the South End, not even in gentrified South Boston. When Rental Beast, a brokerage that tracks Boston's market, last tallied the numbers in mid 2012, it said a two-bedroom in Back Bay would run around $2,857 and, worse, national tallies put Boston as closing in on the lofty rental heights of New York.

Head to South Dorchester, inside Boston's city limits, but a neighborhood where artists, hipsters and others are vying with the traditional Irish Americans for flats in affordable triple deckers and once-grand Victorians that have been carved up into rentals.Three bedrooms rent for $2,000 and bargain hunters can still score pleasant one-bedrooms for just a bit more than $1,000 per month. Look for convenient access to MBTA train stations -- Fields Corner and Ashmont are the ones to be near - and you can be in the restaurants of Harvard Square in just a very few minutes.

Add it up and ask yourself: Does it matter where you sleep? So, now you know where to rent.

Source

Famous apartments you can buy/rent

Looking for your next apartment and have plenty of cash to squander? Then why not grab yourself an apartment made famous from the likes of TV shows or owned by celebrities, then pretend to live it large like a Hollywood A-lister. Here’s an idea: invite your mates round and play out scenes from your favorite episodes of the series the apartment was filmed in. Like the Monica Geller rant scene (you know, the Chandler in the Box episode). Oh yes, crazy fun to be had!

Check out the following famous apartments which are either sold, available to buy or have the option to rent if one is that way inclined.

1. Sex and the City – Carrie Bradshaw’s NYC Apartment – $9.85 Million

Whilst Carrie Bradshaw paid $750 per month… the apartment in real life went for $9.85 Million back in April this year.

With four stories and five bedrooms, I’m sure the current owners of 64 Perry Street, New York, are living the sex and the city dream.

2. 30 Rock – Liz Lemon's Apartment – $2,000 -3,500 per month


The fictional apartment is actually in the place they said it would be – 160 Riverside Drive in the Upper West Side which would cost you around $2,000 – 3,500 a month.

3. John Madden’s classic NYC apartment – $3.9 Million

John Madden will be known to all fans of NFL and more the internet as a whole for his best-selling Madden NFL video game series.

This awesome 2,000 square foot two-bed apartment is also in the same building that John Lennon lived in and died in front of.

4. Mad Men – Don Drapers City Digs – $769,000


In season 4 of Mad Men, Don Draper moves into his new city digs which according to fans is at 136 Waverly Place.

Whilst back in the 1960’s this apartment would have cost a few hundred per month.. it will now set you back $769,000 to purchase a one bedroom apartment.

5. Jerry Seinfeld’s Apartment – $574,550 (Approx based on Trulia.com)


Whilst Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment was meant to be New York, it was actually filmed in an apartment complex in Los Angeles.

757 New Hampshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California was the building and the purchase cost is expected to be around $574,550 (Calculated from Trulia.com)

6. Friends : Monica Gellar’s Apartment – $3,000 to $5,000 per month


As a pass me down from her Grandmother, the apartment was said to cost only $200 per month as it was rent controlled. This is highly possible as her Grandmother could have owned the apartment during the rent controlled period just before and after World War 2.

The actual building is on the corner of Grove and Bedford in Greenwhich village and would be available for rent in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 per month.

7. Will and Grace – Will’s Apartment 155 Riverside Drive – $2,500 – $5,000 per month




Will’s apartment is spacious with 2 Bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Checking out the similar apartments on Streeteasy, it would cost between $2,500 – $5,000 per month for a similar place in 155 Riverside Drive.

Source

HGTV's House Hunters is fake

There are many of us who love House Hunters, the ridiculously addictive show on HGTV about people who are, you guessed it, hunting for houses. And while we have long known in our hearts that much, if not all, of the show is staged and as fake a faux brick exterior, there is now seriously concrete proof that it is nothing but smoke-colored paint and outdated mirrors.

Hooked on Houses has a first person account from a woman named Bobi who was on the show with her family. Her tale of HH stardom is equal parts illuminating and illusion-shattering. She says the producers made up a whole story for her episode about how her family needed a bigger house in Texas, even though that wasn't why they were moving at all. They wouldn't even have her on the show until they'd already closed on their new house, and then they had to rush to find other houses for them to pretend to be interested in. They ended up touring two of their friends' houses which weren't even on the market—and which their friends had to clean meticulously to earn the house its 15 minutes of "fame."

This, of course, means most of the house hunter's reactions are fake and have to be acted out multiple times, which explains why they sound so silly when they say things like "I don't like this paint color" as though it's a dealbreaker. Alas, the dream of house-hunting being as simple as 1, 2, 3 was too good to be true! Though this knowledge shouldn't stop you from watching, because now you can use this inside information to get really good at the game where you guess which house they'll "choose" in the end. And you can start a brand new game where you judge the shoppers on their acting abilities instead of their ridiculous demands for massive closets.

Source

Most expensive house in the DMV area

The ongoing ping pong match between Northern Virginia and DC over who has the most expensive listing has swung back over to Virginia. No longer is sixteen million enough to top the market. It's going to take eighteen million at least. In the leafiest part of leafy McLean is a new to market house asking $17.9M. You'll have to trust us on the leafy part since the seller would prefer not to disclose the address (he's a mega-successful lawyer at a mega-successful law firm). But we took a drive by to check out the digs and confirm the overall high-end, top of the market, river views, sweeping driveway. etc. etc. Indoors there are six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, but we didn't make it anywhere close to seeing inside and the photos don't show anything of the sort.

Source

House from "American Horror Story" for sale

Fans of FX's American Horror Story might recognize a new listing on the Los Angeles real estate market: This six-bedroom, five-bathroom property located in Country Club Park is, more than any one actor, the real star of that gleefully twisted show.

As you peruse the images, you'll be struck by just how closely the sets of Horror Story adhere to the original interiors. The house's 15,000 square feet comprises "a 3-story main house plus grand ballroom, Tiffany stained glass windows, light fixtures, display cases and doors...wood paneling, wood floors, six vintage tile fireplaces, beamed ceilings...formal dining room with antique gold and silver leaf hand-painted ceilings ... [and a] large solarium."

Not mentioned in the description, but included in the asking price: A cannibalistic humunculus in the basement made up of a variety of pickled baby and roadkill parts, the ghost of a one-eyed maid who tries to hump your husband at every opportunity, a latex/breath-control enthusiast, and a pesky, chain-smoking neighbor who will appear without warning in your kitchen bearing suspicious-smelling muffins. At $4.5 million, you simply can't afford not to own this house. Get this baby in escrow immediately!

Source