This column originally appeared in the Looped In NYC newsletter. Sign up here.

Welcome to 2026, a time when a household needs an annual income of at least $168,000 — if we’re following the 30% rule — to afford an apartment at the median asking rent in New York City.

But at that price point your housing options are drastically different depending on the borough. For this week’s “Looped In,” housing reporter David Brand toured a home recently listed for rent in each borough: Here’s what $4,200 gets you:

I talked to David about what he discovered on each apartment tour. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.

James: We know you’re a ride-or-die resident of Hudson County, New Jersey, but imagine an alternate reality where you’re in the market for a place in the five boroughs: Which of these are you picking?

David: Well, one of the main reasons I became Hudson County ride-or-die is because NYC prices are so damn high.

I definitely found myself daydreaming and picturing life in each of these apartments and neighborhoods.

But snapping back to reality: I have two kids, which rules out the smaller places in Chelsea and Greenpoint — the neighborhoods I’d most like to live in. I’d want to be near the subway, so no Staten Island. That would also make the Riverdale spot tricky since it’s far from the train.

So I guess I’d have to go with the giant two-bedroom spot in Jamaica.

(You can watch David’s tours of each spot here.)

James: New York City obviously has a housing shortage — you reported recently that the city says it needs to add 700,000 units over the next decade. But if you’re fortunate enough to be in a position to afford $4,200 a month, how is that “shortage” affecting you? Do you still have a wealth of options?

David: The cheaper the apartment, the fewer options there are out there.

The market opens up a bit at $4,200-a-month. There’s a range of housing types: closet-sized studios in Lower Manhattan versus entire houses on Staten Island.

But there’s still a lot of competition. The broker at the Greenpoint apartment, Inga Wszolek, said she expects to schedule 50 showings as soon as she lists the place.

Let’s break down the finances:

A $4,200-a-month apartment comes to about $50,000 for the whole year. That’s a lot.

Housing policy experts say rent should be no more than 30% of your household income. So to make $50,000 work, you’d have to earn about $150,000.

I was surprised to learn that $150,000 is roughly the area median income for a family of three in New York City.

But $50,000 is more than about a third of NYC households earn in a year, according to census data.

James: In the time you’ve been covering housing, how has “the $4,200 apartment” changed?

David: I started on the housing beat in 2021, when renters were still getting amazing COVID deals.

Back then, if you could afford $4,200 a month, you had your pick of some of the coolest West Village apartments or brand new “luxury” buildings (though those don’t always work out so well). Five years later, $4,200 is the norm.

I asked Wszolek, a Greenpoint native, a similar question.

What would she have thought 20 years ago if I told her she’d be showing a $4,200 a month two-bedroom above a massage parlor near busy McGuinness Boulevard?

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said. “It’s something from a futuristic movie. You didn’t see this type of rent back in the day.”

James: We met a young woman in Chelsea who said she had a $2,300-a-month rent-stabilized unit in the same building as a $4,200-a-month studio. How does that happen? And if someone sees this and says, “I want what she has,” what’s your advice for finding one of these magical cheap(er) apartments?

David: You can pray, you can rub your protective crystals, you can even reply to hundreds of listings online.

But you’ll need luck. Finding a New York City apartment is like a full-time job. Prepare for disappointment and indignity.

The Chelsea tenant told us she took over the lease from a friend. That’s the easiest way to secure a rent-stabilized apartment: Get on the lease or talk to the landlord about letting you move in when you know a friend is moving out.

All the apartments on New York City’s affordable housing lottery are also rent-stabilized and priced based on tenant income. So that’s another possibility. But lotteries get tens of thousands of applicants for relatively few low-priced units. The odds get worse the lower your income is.

Another possibility: Try contacting landlords directly and hope to get lucky. That may be a long shot.

Or, and this may be a bitter pill to swallow, you could hire a broker to help unlock hidden rent-stabilized apartments (even though the city’s new FARE Act is supposed to make that unnecessary) and then fork over a giant fee.