How big an apartment can you get for $1,500 a month in NYC?

Let’s say you had a budget of $1,500, how far would it go in the New York City rental market?

If you were dead set on living on your own, with that kind of budget your options would be limited to studios or very small one-bedroom apartments, and you wouldn’t have a big selection: There are currently a grand total of 20 apartments in NYC for $1,500 or less on StreetEasy.

You won’t get much space for that rent either—and you have to head to the fringes of the outer boroughs. There you’ll find this $1,031 studio in Flatbush that is 655 square feet. Want a true one bedroom? Here’s one in the Morrisania section of the Bronx: $1,300 gets you 550 square feet.

If you’re willing to trek to Staten Island, there’s what appears to be a spacious one bedroom available for $1,200 (although the square footage is not in the listing).

Then there’s this tiny, 200-square-foot rental in a house near Fordham University in the Bronx, which has two rooms (a bedroom and kitchen).

You’ll have far more options if you take that budget and use it to share an apartment. For example, there are over 870 two bedrooms for under $3,000 and nearly 900 three-bedroom apartments for $4,500. Of course, living with roommates requires lots of compromises—and doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get that much space to yourself. (Take Brick's advice and create a roommate agreement to keep the peace.)

What you get across the U.S.

In most cities across the U.S., $1,500 a month would be a decent budget for a rental apartment. On the national level, a monthly rent of $1,500 will get you an average of 782 square feet of apartment, according to RentCafé's annual survey of apartment sizes that you can get for that amount in 100 large U.S. cities, which uses Yardi Matrix data. And more than 56 percent of the 200 largest cities in the nation offer more square feet than the national average.

The best deal is in Wichita, Kansas, by the way. There $1,500 will stretch to as much as 1,463 square feet for a three- or four-bedroom rental.

In second place is Toldeo, Ohio, where you could rent 1,379 square feet of living space for $1,500. In Tulsa and Oklahoma City you can get 1,368 and 1,330 square feet for $1,500. 

What makes NYC so maddeningly unique

But NYC is nothing like other cities, particularly when it comes to the rental market. Take what RentCafé found by analyzing 327,620 apartments in the Manhattan rental market: $1,500 only gets Manhattanites 243 square feet.

To be clear, you’re not likely to find an apartment of that size in Manhattan.

“We know that in Manhattan you can’t really get a 200-something-square-foot apartment, besides maybe a micro unit. But that would be the area you get for this value,” a RentCafé spokesperson tells Brick.

The area you can get in NYC has been shrinking, she tells Brick: A year ago you could rent 262 square feet for $1,500, and in 2017, that amount would have gotten you 277 square feet.

Think of it like fractions—this is how much of a Manhattan apartment a $1,500 budget gets you these days. You’ll have to spend (a lot more) to get an actual apartment. Manhattan median rent rose 12.8 percent to $4,175 in March compared to March 2022, a new record, as per the Elliman Report.

Manhattan is the only place in the U.S. where you can get less than 300 square feet for that price, according to the report from RentCafé. Many cities on the West Coast offer small living quarters, but they are bigger than the 300 square foot threshold. Boston and San Francisco are also expensive rental markets—there $1,500 gets you less than 400 square feet—leading renters on a budget to seek out roommates.

Similarly in Brooklyn, a $1,500 budget will get renters 342 square feet while in Queens you get 393 square feet. 

You’re not going to do much better across the Hudson in Jersey City, which provides even less space than Queens for $1,500, at just 362 square feet.

Is there such a thing as an apartment that is too small?

Turns out there’s no city-wide size requirement for NYC apartments, says Andrew Rudansky, press secretary for the Department of Buildings.

There is nothing in the building code or zoning rules that points to a definitive minimum size for apartments that is uniform across the city, he says. But there are minimum apartment sizes you could calculate based on code requirements for minimum room size, zoning, and whether they are in the Quality Housing Program. For example, a 2016 micro-unit apartment complex has apartments measuring 260 square feet, he adds.

“There are pre-existing single-room occupancy units that are smaller than that, which can be legally rented. You just can’t build new SROs in the city,” Rudansky says.

It's important to point out that while apartments may not have minimum sizes, bedrooms do have size requirements.

To be considered legal, bedrooms have to be at 80 least square feet, among other safety considerations—an important consideration if you are dividing up an apartment to share with roommates.

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