Answering Your Complaints About The 'Cost Of Living' Post
Many of you -- mostly in Dallas -- really hated that post showing just how ridiculous it is to match Cravath. Let's take a look at your issues...
Related to the Dallas issue, I received a good question over Twitter:
It also seems inappropriate that you took one of the highest price per sq ft neighborhoods in NY and compared it to neighborhoods in other cities that aren’t at the pinnacle of their local markets. Why be misleading?
Curbing Client And Talent Loss With Productivity Tech
This is somewhat related to the commute issue. Because of the vagaries of transportation in NYC, those highly priced options are actually about the same as some of these commutes. Admittedly, Chicago was a dream location and I could have pushed it a little farther out. San Francisco was close in, but as one tipster pointed out, the neighborhood was, shall we say, “stabby” so we’ll count it. But as I said above, comparing each location based on the center of the city was going to reveal Dallas folks in very nice places spending way, way less to be very close in. It still makes the same point but without the arresting visuals.
Greenwich Village is one of the most desirable places in the country to live in. While the apartment might be small, NOTHING else in the area can be considered undesirable. Anyone that knows anything about NYC knows this.
Having lived in Greenwich Village, I’ll go ahead and disagree. There’s a whole hell of a lot of undesirable. I had rats the entire time I lived in the Village. Not the “occasional rat,” but “daily visits from extended families of rats.” The only thing that made this remotely acceptable was their willingness to murder cockroaches… so there was that. For the record, that place was $2300/month a LONG time ago. I shudder at what it goes for today (I had to look… an apartment in the same building is up for $4800/month right now). But, sure, read on and we’ll look at an affordable place not in the Village below.
Another questioned the matter this way:
Sponsored
Law Firm Business Development Is More Than Relationship Building
Generative AI at Work: Boosting e-Discovery Efficiency for Corporate Legal Teams
Generative AI at Work: Boosting e-Discovery Efficiency for Corporate Legal Teams
The same financially reasonable associate that would choose to live in Monroe would not choose to live in Greenwich Village or Williamsburg, and would instead opt to live in Yonkers. 58 minute commute to Grand Central. This is a fine house in a fine area — better schools and better walkability than Monroe.
Totally fair. Yonkers does do better to Grand Central, but there’s still the matter of getting from Grand Central to your particular firm. If your firm was across the street it would still take another 5 minutes to detrain and walk over there. And most firms are going to require another subway ride and a walk adding 15-20 more minutes. People complained about a Texas house 45 minutes away… can’t imagine what they’d say if we’d raised the stakes to commutes over an hour.
So, yeah, folks who live in car cultures I moved farther out because they COULD (not necessarily should or would) live farther out and have a comparable commute.
3. Young associates wouldn’t really max out on their home
Another criticism I heard — in a variety of forms — was something like this:
Sponsored
Curbing Client And Talent Loss With Productivity Tech
AI Presents Both Opportunities And Risks For Lawyers. Are You Prepared?
Also, I would like to mention that even on a $180,000 salary, I would never have spent over $600,000 on a house. I put 20% down on my house… and all in for mortgage, property tax and insurance, my monthly payment is $2,300. Not crazy, but I still have a car payment, student loans, house hold bills, food and (shocking) savings!
Well, sure. But if we tried to push this game down from something a first year COULD theoretically afford to something a first year WOULD really want to buy, we’d be comparing very nice Denver townhouses to such low-quality NYC apartments that people would assume I’m lying to make NYC real estate look cartoonishly worse than the rest of the country.
I mean, Here’s a Zillow pic of an actual $300K Manhattan apartment:
OK, I guess that decorative woodworking is fabulous. But still.
Perhaps that wasn’t an actual picture of a listing. Well, this one is.
This is $299K in a less nice area of New York where prices per square foot are lower. Consequently, it’s a healthy 1,150 sq. feet. It is also about 30 minutes from the Midtown firms. This is the equivalent of the cheaper townhouse that a New Yorker could get:
Oh yes, that looks like a much more fair comparison with the more quaint Dallas home.
This is your bathroom. So many opportunities!!!
Note that the appliances are not included, because… why bother?
Even the entryway makes an impression:
And that impression is: Stanley Kubrick would have loved to run a tracking shot down this hallway right into a closeup on the guy who will murder you with a weaponized plunger.
There are many ways I could have sliced this comparison between markets. I went “high-end to high-end” to be more charitable.
On the next page we have the big chimichanga of a complaint: that I’m a jerk for suggesting regional offices don’t deserve as much as New York…
