Students Find Dorm Living More Expensive Than Apartments, Despite Added Costs
Due to a lack of affordable housing around NYU’s Washington Square campus, some students are contemplating whether it makes sense to live on campus for the next academic year.
(Norbert Levajsics via Unsplash)
by Liam Hibbertt
This story was originally published on New York University’s Washington Square News.
As the housing application for the coming academic year opens, and students make the decision between staying on campus and venturing out into the New York City real estate market, many are opting for apartment living to save money. Although asking prices in many neighborhoods popular with NYU students have increased, many fall below the cost of living in a dorm.
Asking prices for two-bedroom apartments in many areas where NYU students frequently rent, like the Village and the Upper West Side in Manhattan and Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, have increased from January 2022 to 2023, according to the listing site StreetEasy. Two-bedrooms in other popular neighborhoods, such as Stuyvesant Town, Williamsburg and the Lower East Side, have either decreased in cost or stayed the same.
Average asking prices in these neighborhoods, irrespective of the number of bedrooms, all increased from 2022, although less than last year’s 33% spike in rent cost. NYU junior Olivia Fergus-Brummer said that when she moved from a low-cost dorm in Gramercy Green to an East Village apartment this year, she saved money, despite the costs of broker fees, utilities and furnishing an off-campus living space.
“I have a lot of friends who were never in housing or were an RA for one semester because that was what they could afford,” Fergus-Brummer said. “NYU should have more low-cost housing options, especially because people are coming from all over the world, and having that community of a dorm can be really integral to your first year.”
Read the rest of the story at Washington Square News.