

NYC real estate prices visualized - JumpCrisscross
https://medium.com/re-form/nycs-housing-cost-myth-9dce6052c139

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rmxt
Pretty cool visualizations, but I would take the accuracy of the data with a
grain of salt until I saw the source data. There's no universal map of
neighborhoods in NYC, and I think that every New Yorker has a different sense
of where certain neighborhoods start and begin. I'd also question incentive
alignment regarding the real estate sites they used to cull the data. If they
are using the real estate site's self-reported neighborhoods for these
listings, I think that everyone can relate to the situation whereby a real
estate agent tells you that a certain place is a "steal for the Upper East
Side/(generic, more upscale neighborhood)," but when you go out to the
apartment it's actually a few blocks into Harlem/(not so upscale area). Such
vagaries in the listings would distort the prices per square foot for these
boundary areas, but leave the solidly expensive ones alone, which is perhaps
why areas like Central Park South (well defined geographically, and buffered
by upscale areas) stand out.

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untog
I would imagine that the listings have lat/lngs (or at least geocodable street
addresses), and the author has assigned them a neighbourhood by seeing which
polygon the point intersects with. So real estate agents lying about what
neighbourhood a property is in wouldn't matter.

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asciimo
Trulia uses lat/lon to determine a property's neighborhood. While neighborhood
borders are often subjective, they do the best they can to meet the
expectations of public consensus.

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dsacco
I've lived in NY all my life, in both Manhattan and the Bronx. I also used to
go to Staten Island weekly. Here are some notes:

* The Bronx:

I lived in Woodlawn. I think it's very interesting that it's one of the most
affordable areas to live considering it was recently reported as one of the
safest places in the Bronx.

It also has fair demographic diversity, is extremely close to public
transportation (buses run through the area and it's all within walking
distance of Metro-North, 30 minutes from Grand Central). I lived in a three
bedroom apartment with all utilities for $2400 a month.

Really, great place to live. If anyone is considering a place in NYC with easy
access to Manhattan that is safe and affordable, look into Woodlawn.

To contrast this, Riverdale is also a nice area, but it's technically not as
safe (parts of it are wealthy, but most of it is not). The safest areas are
the colleges (Manhattan College and CUNY Lehman are both in Riverdale and
their campuses are the hubs of that area). Transportation access is about the
same.

* Staten Island

Amazingly cheap, but at the same time, you can't get to any of the wealthy
areas of the island without going through a slum. It's literally a
stereotypical case of the wealthy living on the top of a giant hill
overlooking the working class/poor who live at the bottom/outskirts of the
island.

That said, the neighborhoods at the top of Staten Island, the most expensive
area, were filled with mansions and were absolutely magnificent to drive
through. Naturally, this was close to the large liberal arts college there,
Wagner.

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cauterized
Most NYers would not consider "buses and metro north" to be decent transit
options. In that case you might as well just move to westchester proper.

~~~
rmxt
From Woodlawn you can take buses to 3 different subway trunk lines, with
access to both the East Side and West Side, in addition to an Express Bus to
Midtown East and the Metro-North to Grand Central. Those are pretty decent
transit options. Unless you're fortunate enough to live in the closer-in areas
of Queens or Brooklyn, or Manhattan itself, those also the only options for
"most NYers". Aside from 24-hour subway access to the city, living within the
city limits, as opposed to Westchester, also gives you the perk of being able
to hail a yellow cab and get home for a reasonable rate instead of doing the
livery cab thing.

See here for a map showing that ~20% (eyeballed) of Brooklyn by area is likely
in the same boat as the people in Woodlawn.

[http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/100729370274/found-the-
brook...](http://iquantny.tumblr.com/post/100729370274/found-the-brooklyn-
residence-thats-farthest-from)

That being said, I'm not quite sure that I believe that their definition of
Woodlawn is completely accurate, nor do I believe that it's the cheapest
neighborhood in the Bronx. If the 3D-bars on the map are to be believed, it
looks like Woodlawn (the area immediately to the east of the green park (Van
Cortlandt) in the north center of the Bronx) and Wakefield (east of Woodlawn)
are lumped together. Adding to personal experience, this map [1] suggests a
pretty big wealth disparity between Woodlawn and Wakefield, with a difference
of ~$20k in median household income. The border between the two is generally
taken to be the Bronx River Parkway/Metro-North, and the 3D-map bars in the
submission seem to gloss over that border. I would venture to say that
Wakefield has a bit lower rent than Woodlawn, and that Wakefield is perhaps
the cheapest neighborhood in the Bronx, but not Woodlawn.

[1] [http://project.wnyc.org/median-income-
nation/?#13/40.8894/-7...](http://project.wnyc.org/median-income-
nation/?#13/40.8894/-73.8693)

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Strilanc
A top-down 2d heat map would be a lot easier to read.

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moogleii
Yeah, if you're going to do a 3d bar chart over a map, then I'd want to be
able to zoom and rotate.

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MicroBerto
Four different shades of orange makes for a difficult to read graph...

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mahyarm
Highlight on mouseover would also help in this case.

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cvalhouli
Thank you for the kind words and thoughtful replies. This project was amazing
fun to do with my friend and collaborator, Cat Callaghan.

We agree with the feedback - and we hope to develop some more robust
visualizations soon. These are ideas that we're working on, and this was a
proof of concept in order to explore some directions and possibilities. That
said, we worked with third-party data from the leading real estate sites and
averaged those in order to account for any outliers. This is an early
iteration, and we hope to get more granular soon.

All best, Constantine @c_valhouli

~~~
billions
Would love a tool that constructs this for other US cities

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justboxing
I love how the two of you came up with the bar chart overlaid upon a city map
to show the relative price per square foot. It's so intuitive to read and
understand, and personally, I too believe this makes the most sense, rather
than heat maps.

Because, using a data map like this, prospective home buyers can look at

1) their budget -- how much total $$ they can spend, including downpayment,
and then

2) their minimum sq foot requirements (ex: might have kids and need atleast
1,000 sq ft) and

using 1) divided by 2) arrive at the Price / Sq Foot that they can afford.

Then they can use your map, and immediately identify neighborhood within the
neighborhood that are likely to have a place within their budget and sq foot
requirements.

Would be a great tool for potential home buyers. You could try this as a
service in 1 city, and then turn it into a startup that services metros around
the world -- Hong Kong, Sydney, Bombay etc - for a small 1-time or recurring
fee. You could also sell the service to real estate agencies, who use it to
narrow down neighborhoods for their clients based on the 2 criteria mentioned
above.

You get the idea.

p.s. Please make one for San Francisco if you can :) :)

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cauterized
Given the percentage of NYers who rent, I think a similar map for rental
prices would be super interesting -- even more interesting would be to see any
areas whose rental and purchase prices don't line up.

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philrapo
Love the visualizations. It would be great if we could look more closely /
zoom in, rather than only seeing the overview.

