Williamsburg Apartment Features Chef-Adjacent Kitchen, Flexible Living Space, and One Window Facing East
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Apartment That Is Technically a Room With a Lease
NEW YORK — A listing that appeared on StreetEasy last Tuesday described a 280-square-foot studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as featuring “flexible living space,” “abundant natural light,” a “chef-adjacent kitchen,” and “proximity to the L train,” for $4,200 per month. The listing agent, asked whether “chef-adjacent kitchen” meant what it suggested, confirmed it meant a galley with two burners, a miniature refrigerator, and no dishwasher, positioned near the bathroom, “which is actually very functional if you think about it in terms of flow.” Forty-seven inquiries arrived within twenty-four hours. Three applications were submitted. One lease was signed.
The tenant, a 26-year-old software engineer, describes the apartment as “genuinely fine.” He describes the price as “what it is, which is what it costs to live here, which is what I decided I wanted to do, so.” The software engineer is not irrational. He is a person who has decided that living in New York is worth its cost and has organized his finances around that decision, as millions of New Yorkers have done before him, at price points that have escalated with each generation until this generation is signing leases for 280 square feet at prices their parents paid for three-bedroom houses in places that were not New York, which is why they were not New York, which is why the software engineer is in Williamsburg.
The Flexible Living Space Decoded
Two hundred and eighty square feet is approximately the size of a two-car garage, minus the two cars and plus the lease obligation. In this space, the software engineer has installed: a sleeping loft accessible by ladder (he measured before signing; the ladder clears the ceiling by four inches, which he describes as “fine, actually, you just don’t sit up suddenly”), a fold-down desk that converts to a dining table, a couch that theoretically converts to a guest bed but requires removing the desk, which then has nowhere to go, making the guest experience “technically possible but not really encouraged.” He works from home three days a week. On those days, the apartment is simultaneously his bedroom, office, kitchen, living room, and the entire available universe. He says he likes it. He says this consistently and without apparent irony. He may be right.
What $4,200 Buys, Regionally Contextualized
Per publicly available real estate data, $4,200 per month rents a 280-square-foot studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or a 1,400-square-foot two-bedroom apartment in Denver, Colorado, or a four-bedroom house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or most of a small farm in rural Vermont. The software engineer knows this. He does not want to be in Denver, Colorado, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, or most of a small Vermont farm. He wants to be in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, two blocks from the L train, in the city where his industry is concentrated, his friends are located, and his career is developing. The $4,200 is the price of that choice. The choice is his. The apartment is 280 square feet. The city is what it is.
The Market Dynamic Behind the Number
Per StreetEasy, median asking rents for Williamsburg studios have risen substantially over five years, driven by desirability, transit access, and a city that added residents faster than it added housing stock. Per a study cited by City and State, New York City rents have risen at approximately seven times the rate of wage growth for median earners. The math of that ratio, sustained over enough years, produces conditions in which working adults can no longer afford housing in the city where they work, at which point the city loses something that is difficult to quantify and very easy to feel on a Sunday when you notice that the people who work in your neighborhood can no longer afford to live in your neighborhood.
The Lifestyle Director
The store’s lifestyle director — a position that did not exist in grocery retail as recently as 2018 and now exists because someone needed to be in charge of the champagne bar, the natural wine station, the artisanal cheese cave, and the “curated provisions” section — describes the Williamsburg housing market as “the price of a neighborhood that has everything.” She lives in the neighborhood. She pays more than $4,200. She has two roommates. She considers this “a creative living situation” and “actually kind of fun.” She has lived in New York for six years. She will live here until she can’t. This is the contract. Everyone who lives here has signed it.
Mother’s Day and the L Train
Today is Mother’s Day. The software engineer’s mother visited the apartment last year. She slept on the convertible couch, which requires a maneuver with the desk that took twenty minutes the first time and twelve minutes with practice. She said the apartment was “cute and very you,” then asked, gently, whether he was “okay,” by which she meant: is the money sustainable, is the ladder safe, and are you eating enough given that the refrigerator is the size of a hotel minibar. He is fine. The rent goes up in September. He is not thinking about September yet. He is taking his mother to brunch today. The brunch is in the neighborhood. The brunch costs what brunch costs. It is less than a month’s rent, which he considers a reasonable benchmark. Happy Mother’s Day, Williamsburg. The L train is running, no delays noted, which is the city’s way of offering a small gift on the designated day for gifts.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/