Virginia K. Smith

Bushwick Daily's Katarina Hybenova On Her Brooklyn Neighborhood

The 22 Best NYC Neighborhood Blogs

A time-honored solution for renters facing down New York's rampant affordability problem: cut costs by shacking up with roommates, right? Nope. A lone room in NYC averaged $1,204 a month this year, according to end-of-year data from SpareRoom.com, a site that helps New Yorkers find roommates. In Manhattan, the average room was a whopping $1,380 a month. With rents climbing, even New Yorkers living with roommates are being forced to spend more on rent, explains the site's director, Matt Hutchinson. "You see a lot of young professionals who wouldn't have thought they'd still be living with roommates. They're earning good money at good jobs, so their budgets are higher."

For anyone who's ever fantasized about ditching their apartment and moving into the Frank Lloyd Wright room at the Met, New York Magazine has an envy-inducing feature about what life is actually like in a home designed by a world-famous architect. The first part of the answer is "expensive," as you'd probably guess, but beyond that, the sheer aesthetic value can act as a conversation starter.