The 1990s - when the rent was cheap

[dktshb]

My first apt in Tempe Arizona in 1994 was $400 a month for a one bedroom. In 1996 my first one bedroom apartment in Hollywood on Hillside and Fuller was $1200.00 , which was not cheap but it has a great view from Downtown to LAX.

[thoughtcriminal]

my own irrelavent personal experience is that I lived on Union Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn from 1994-97, paid $850 a month for the first 2 years, $875 the third. Fourth floor of a walkup. Couldn't afford to live there now, I expect. Ground Zero for the hipsters.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by thoughtcriminal

my own irrelavent personal experience is that I lived on Union Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in Park Slope, Brooklyn from 1994-97, paid $850 a month for the first 2 years, $875 the third. Fourth floor of a walkup. Couldn't afford to live there now, I expect. Ground Zero for the hipsters.

Definitely would be more expensive, but not because of hipsters. Park Slope is for the 35+ professional crowd now.

[Crawford]

Yeah, Park Slope isn't really hip. It's mostly families. Kind of the Upper West Side of Brooklyn.

[pdxtex]

I was out on a bike ride today and actually went by my first Portland apartment. In the summer of 1997 I paid 563 dollars to live in a one bedroom downtown. The building was only three years old and had ac and a balcony. I could walk downtown to my internship and my gf got a job at the mall. I thought I was in heaven. Portland was cheaper than student housing in East Lansing.

[craigs]

I got my first apartment (all mine) in late 1992. It was a small one bedroom in a six-story building at the edge of the sketchy Tenderloin district in San Francisco, built right after the 1906 earthquake. It was reinforced concrete, so it was soundproof. It had one of those old-timey cage elevators. I paid $885 a month for it.

[Shawn]

I was going to caption this with a "ALLSTON CHRISTMAS, BABY!" but then I saw the RISD sticker I wondered if Providence has its own Allston Christmas. College Hill Christmas?

[Shawn]

Not really comparable, but my first Tokyo apartment ran me JPY 109,000 a month, 2006-2010. That would have been about $850 a month without utilities for a 33 sq meter/~350 sq foot 1LDK on the 4th floor of a 1984 8 story building, 5 minutes from a Yamanote Line station. Not great, but not bad for price. The unit was great though, because the building only had 4 units per floor.

[Steely Dan]

My first non-dorm apartment during college was back in 1997. It was a one-bedroom in a vintage 8-unit building on the west side of St. Paul about a 2 block walk from the Macalester College campus. Because the unit had a large sun porch (no closet, so technically not a bedroom), I split it with a friend. He took the bedroom and I took the sun porch. Total rent was $450. he paid $250 cuz he got the "real" bedroom.



EDIT:

i just checked Zillow and there's a virtually identical unit in our old building currently listed for $1,200/month. So from $450 to $1,200 over the past 25 years. That doesn't seem extremely out of line.

[Acajack]

My point of reference for the early 1990s is a spacious one-bedroom apartment in a decent but not luxurious building in a fairly nice part of downtown Ottawa, Canada.

Rent was IIRC 425 CAD with all utilities included except phone and cable TV.

At the time I was making about 28,000 CAD gross a year in a low-prestige office job.

A year or two later I got a much better entry-level white collar job that paid about 45,000 CAD gross. This was considered a pretty good gig by most everyone around me.

Fast-forward to 2023 and the average one bedroom across all of Ottawa is about 1750 CAD. Since the one I am talking about was very central and spacious it would probably cost 2000 CAD a month today.

People who have jobs similar to my first gig (28,000 back then) are probably making about 45,000 CAD today.

Young people with good entry-level white collar positions are probably in the 65-75,000 CAD range here.

Draw your own conclusions.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Because the unit had a large sun porch (no closet, so technically not a bedroom)

Unless you went to college in like San Diego, the sun porch's main flaw as a potential bedroom isn't the absence of a closet...

(Unless you guys in the Windy City don't have the same sun porches as us up here...)

[lio45]

Originally Posted by craigs

I got my first apartment (all mine) in late 1992. It was a small one bedroom in a six-story building at the edge of the sketchy Tenderloin district in San Francisco, built right after the 1906 earthquake. It was reinforced concrete, so it was soundproof. It had one of those old-timey cage elevators. I paid $885 a month for it.

A building of reinforced poured concrete in 1906-1907? Fascinating. Really ahead of its time (at least by the architectural standards I'm used to.)

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by lio45

Unless you went to college in like San Diego, the sun porch's main flaw as a potential bedroom isn't the absence of a closet...

(Unless you guys in the Windy City don't have the same sun porches as us up here...)

In both chicago and the twin cities (and I imagine other cold winter cities), sun porches are often fully enclosed and heated living spaces.

As you can see on the floor plan of our condo below, the sun porch adjoining our living room is fully a part of our interior living space.




The sun porch that I used as a bedroom during college had a wall and French doors (quite common) separating it from the living room, but it was still fully a part of the interior living space of the unit with a radiator for heat.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by craigs

I got my first apartment (all mine) in late 1992. It was a small one bedroom in a six-story building at the edge of the sketchy Tenderloin district in San Francisco, built right after the 1906 earthquake. It was reinforced concrete, so it was soundproof. It had one of those old-timey cage elevators. I paid $885 a month for it.

My first apartment in San Francisco (1974) was a studio in a five story elevator building on somewhat sketchy O'Farrell Street near Larkin. The rent was $200 which seemed pricey at the time. I moved out (in the middle of the night) a few months later after scoring a sublet one bedroom over at the far end of Noe Valley (30th and Sanchez) for about the same rent. That was followed by two years in a top floor, full-floor flat on Lapidge Street between 18th and 19th Street in the Mission. Rent was $300 a month. I finished out my San Francisco sojourn in 1979/80 renting a single family house with a panoramic view of downtown with a massive outdoor deck in Glen Park for $600 a month. I can't even imagine what that would cost today. The only other place I ever rented after leaving San Francisco (I was a homeowner in either LA or DC from 1980 to early 1994) was a small circa 1930s house in Atlanta in 1994/96. It was located on Stratford Road in Buckhead. Rent was $1,500. The house has since been torn down and replaced with a Buckhead mini-mansion. I've always been a homeowner since moving to Austin area in 1996

[tdawg]

thoughtcriminal, I lived in the same neighborhood but not until 1999. I don't remember what we paid but there were four of us in a 2 story townhouse. I didn't have my own room (I slept on a futon on the LR floor—one girl had her own room and the other shared the second with her boyfriend at the time) but it didn't matter to me back then. The stuff you put up with in your 20s to experience NYC. The 90s were an incredible decade although I spent nearly all of it in Atlanta, which was also amazing.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Park Slope isn't really hip. It's mostly families. Kind of the Upper West Side of Brooklyn.

This is literally the exact phrase that I use to describe Park Slope.

The Upper West Side of Brooklyn.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

This is literally the exact phrase that I use to describe Park Slope.

The Upper West Side of Brooklyn.

I got the impression of Park Slope when I was there in 1992. . . I don't think it's a new phenomenon. . . probably been that way since the 1950s. . .

. . .

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I got the impression of Park Slope when I was there in 1992. . . I don't think it's a new phenomenon. . . probably been that way since the 1950s. . .

. . .

Park Slope was in pretty deep decline from the late 19th century until the 1970's. It was among the wealthiest neighborhoods in the U.S. around 1890-1900, and then became a relatively poor neighborhood of boarding houses, with old brownstones carved up for Irish, Italian, and later, Puerto Rican families. Lots of rooming houses, with packed-in newcomers. It was then discovered by gentrifiers who slowly rebuilt the neighborhood.

I remember it as somewhat bohemian in the 1990's and more posh since then, but always family oriented and never really trendy.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

I got the impression of Park Slope when I was there in 1992. . . I don't think it's a new phenomenon. . . probably been that way since the 1950s. . .

. . .

Before my time, but from what I've heard/read the gentrification of Park Slope started in the 80s and I've never understood it to be a "hipster" neighborhood. The Brooklyn center of hip pre-2000s was probably DUMBO, and I think that culture migrated east into Williamsburg, Bed Stuy, etc.

In the early 90s artists and NYU students were still renting cheap lofts in DUMBO for like $200/month that would go for like $10,000/month today. I know someone that still rents a loft in DUMBO that he got in the early 00s. The place is rent controlled so he pays a fraction of what it would cost to rent today, and they'll have to pay him millions of dollars to ever get him out of there.

[craigs]

Yeah, I remember the Park Slope of the early 1990s as already bougie, relatively safe and quiet, and all-around boring. A friend always insisted I join her for dinner there whenever I was staying in Manhattan, for some reason or other, even though she worked in Manhattan.