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The cost of living in New York City is at least 68% higher than the US average.
- The cost of living in Manhattan is more than double the US average.
- The NYC cost of living is so high partly due to its exorbitant housing market - the average rent for a Manhattan apartment is $3,667.
- RENTCafé broke down the $4, and we ranked them from most to least affordable, from SoHo to the East Village.
City life comes with a lot of dollar signs - especially in Manhattan.
$4 is at least 68% higher than the US average, according to SmartAsset. If you think that's a lot, the cost of living in Manhattan specifically is more than double the national average.
At the center of it all is $4's high-cost housing market. Asking $4 in New York City increased by 33% from December 2009 to June 2017 at roughly 3.9% a year, reports StreetEasy.
And while the NYC rental market has $4, the average rent for an apartment in Manhattan remains exorbitant at $3,667 - $4 compared to $4,085 the previous year. To put things in perspective, that's only a few hundred dollars shy of the typical US worker's $4.
That number is even more shocking considering that the average size for a Manhattan apartment is only 703 square feet.
Even then, some $4 are notoriously more expensive than others. Rent in Battery Park City, for example, is 52% higher than the Manhattan average.
Shayanne Gal
The average rent for an apartment in Manhattan by neighborhood.
To highlight such differences, RENTCafé broke down the average rent in Manhattan neighborhoods for all rentals, one-bedroom apartments, and two-bedroom apartments. Using this data, we narrowed down the top 28 Manhattan neighborhoods according to the largest number of rental units overall (in apartment communities of 50 units or larger), which was provided by Yardi Matrix.
Scroll through below to see which Manhattan neighborhoods have the highest average rent, ranked from the least expensive to the most, from SoHo to the Upper East Side.