i see many families living in 2-3 bedroom apartments in the best parts of manhhatan. whether they rent or own, the cost is insane. how do the even average people in tech/finance/etc. can afford these? parents of kids that go to school with my kids rent for 10K-15K 3br or own units worth 3M-4M without being at the exec team of goldman sachs. what am i doing wrong?
3-4M is not that much money, in the sense that millions of people in the world can afford it. That's how much all the family size houses in nice bay area suburbs cost too. If you have a stable job earning high 6 digits that's enough. Most of the 40+ year old people at big tech/finance companies are also at a high enough level where they easily bring that much money in. At every big bank, there's several thousand managing directors who make over 1M a year.
The top 1% of earners brings in at a minimum 450k a year. To 99% of people in the US alone 3-4 million dollars is a lot of money. So, you’re talking about the 1% that can afford it.
There is only a handful of directors but the supply of apartments ranging 3-4 mil is quite a lot. Recently built tall skyscrapers also very expensive
The simple and probable answer is debt, lots of debt. I’m sure not for all, but certainly for the large majority. The question is not what you are doing wrong, but whether or not your values align.
Can’t see how this is true. The most debt you can take is to finance 80% of the apartment. For a 3M unit that’s more than 20K in monthly payment if you include common charges and taxes which easily cross the 5K for such units. You need to have a quite insane income to afford this. I can’t see how parents in our school can afford that.
How long have they been working? What's their investments? They're not college grads. They've been investing for years.
Couples in their late 30s.
Yea, that means they've worked at least 15 years each. 15 years is a long time and they could have easily invested very well.