Better the Thermometer Than the RENT-O-Meter!

Yep, a New York City heat wave’s truly amazing ability to turn all forms of matter—animal, vegetable, mineral, gaseous (I’m looking right at YOU, gaseous!)—sticky, stinky, and angry should have earned it an honorary Law of Thermodynamics all its own by now. But until that day when every physics textbook is rewritten, only those who’ve experienced soaring temperatures in virtually any NYC neighborhood really get what the Lovin Spoonful meant when they sang:

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

The good news is that heat waves are only a few days out of the year—not so the monthly rent you agree to pay when you sign a lease on an apartment. So how do you know whether the amount of rent you’re locking into for a year or more is the dollar equivalent of an NYC heat wave? According to the New York Sun—the newspaper, not the gaseous fireball that has unleashed its brutal wrath on NYC this week—just consult the Rentometer.

To see how the rent you are being charged for your studio, one-bedroom, or multi-bedroom apartment compares to what your neighbors are paying for similar apartments in similar buildings, just enter your address, apartment size, number of units in your building, and voilá! The Rentometer will read low, median, or high.

Keep in mind, however, that while the Rentometer bases its readings on actual rents being charged in any NYC neighborhood you enter, it’s still a fairly blunt instrument. For example, the Rentometer doesn’t consider whether or not an apartment is in a doorman building, has appliances and luxury amenities or if it has bullet holes, rat turds, and free-standing toilet in the kitchen.

The Rentometer also cannot gauge what you might personally value in an apartment, so if that free-standing toilet in the kitchen is your one must-have, than you might be happy to pay way over the neighborhood's average rent for the comfort and convenience of washing dishes while you pee (at least happier than your dinner guests will be). Also, rent stabilized and controlled apartments in many neighborhoods may skew the median far below market rate for newly rented, renovated apartments.

The Rentometer is brought to you by Rentomatic.com, a company designed to bring greater transparency to navigating the real estate market for renters and buyers as well as landlords and sellers. Rentomatic also offers services—not all of which are available in NYC yet—designed to facilitate communication, financial transactions, and “feeling the love” between tenants and landlords. It’s a San Francisco-based company so we’ll have to let that last one slide…

Still sticky? Stinky?! ANGRY?! Hang in there! Here's more of the Lovin Spoonful for you:

Cool town, evening in the city
Dressing so fine and looking so pretty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna look in every corner of the city
Till I'm wheezing like a bus stop
Running up the stairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

Lyrics: The Lovin Spoonful, “Summer in the City” (1966)
Image: NASA, Multiple solar flares on the surface of the sun

Noise Will Be Noise!

Jonathan Prager is a funny guy—“ha-ha” and “strange.” A professional comedian and singer, Prager admits to the New York Times:

“I’m sensitive to noise, emotions, electromagnetic vibrations. You name it, I’m sensitive to it.”

And while navigating the NYC real estate market is never easy, and any single horse in Prager’s personal trifecta of pathos could make finding the downtown Manhattan apartment he sought tough, you'd reckon the severity of his noise allergy would make living in almost any NYC neighborhood an unending nightmare of acoustical anaphylactic shock. He tells the Times:

“[Y]ou know how they use [white noise machines] in therapists’ offices? I have to ask the therapist to turn them off, along with their computers — there’s a little fan inside most computers that goes on and that’s annoying — and their air-conditioners. And then I can’t concentrate because there is always construction noise. […]

"Music playing in the house or a car makes me agitated. […] I have to leave the house if my girlfriend blow-dries her hair.”

Sorry, Ladies, apparently he's off the market. For now.

But professional soundproofers hardly need to rely on such rare acoustic canaries as Prager who insist on living in the noisiest coal mines in New York to keep eggs on their tables. The soundproofing biz is ka-booming. Even seasoned New Yorkers who know to expect a certain amount of noise and/or can easily adapt to different sounds in the urban environment have their limits. And once that threshold—be it high or low—is breached, acoustic engineer Anthony Grimani tells the Times, anxiety sets in:

“You hear something, and flight or fight kicks in and you wonder what or who is creeping up behind you. You think, ‘Is it going to eat me, should I run?’

Eat you! I vote for "eat you!" Don't run, you big baby.

"Sound is putting you in an evaluating condition all the time, and I would say that’s no way to live.”

Noise issues don't seem to dampen the blazing NYC real estate market very much, but trends in the NYC real estate market can help to explain the increase in noise around town. The incessant demand for housing has brought major construction sites and renovation and conversion projects into otherwise quiet residential neighborhoods. The Department of Environmental Protection enacted a new stricter noise code for construction projects in July of 2007, but no one can seriously expect any power tool in the pneumatic family to suddenly become neighborly. [I'm looking at you, Jackhammer—grrrrr!]

The good news is, the Times reports in another article on noise in the city, that the intrusion of construction and most other noises from the street—car horns, sirens, garbage trucks, voices, etc.—can be reduced by 95% by the installing laminated windows.

Another trend in NYC real estate that has affected noise polution in the city is the increasing number of families with small children who are moving to NYC in general, but who are seeking out "quieter" neighborhoods in specific and effectively destroying the peace of other residents with the thudding racket of little feet, the clatter of hurled toys, boo-boo-related screeches, and the ever-popular combo package: the temper tantrum. Complaints of child-related noise have even eclipsed complaints related to music in recent years.

For parents averse to incurring the resentment of their neighbors—although that wouldn't be an accurate description of any of the parents interviewed for the Times article that reported on the child-noise trend—the Times also published this related article on how parents can minimize the transfer of the clamor of their little darlings' good times to their neighbors' bedrooms and private spaces.

But fear not! There are lots of fixes for noise issues in any of the articles linked to above, but here's yet another Times article with excellent suggestions on how to avoid a noisy apartment, condo, co-op, or brownstone in any NYC neighborhood to begin with!


The Dream of Absolute Quiet [NYT]
The Noise Children Make [NYT]
Laminated Windows Keep Out the Din [NYT]
Getting a Handle on Apartment Noise [NYT]
A Place to Play the Piano Forte [NYT]
Checking Out the Noise Level [NYT]