3D Map Shows Where NYC Housing Is Priciest, Cheapest

All of the market reports for 2014 say the same thing: it's expensive to live in New York City, and it just keeps getting more expensive. But in a city of five different boroughs and some 325 neighborhoods, the cost of housing can't be generalized; there are swaths of affordability and pockets so expensive it makes you weep. To show the intricacies of the price variation, data-processing map maker Constantine Valhouli and his partner Cat Callaghan collected housing price data from pricing data from StreetEasy, Trulia, Zillow, and RedFin, and turned it into a 3D map, depicting each neighborhood (h/t Brick Underground). If neighborhoods had extremes, they broke out that area as its own section. Valhouli writes, it's "sort of a bar chart overlaid upon a city map." The taller the neighborhood appears on the map, the more expensive it is.

In Manhattan, prices range from $430/square foot in Inwood to $3,393/square foot around Central Park South, the priciest area in all five boroughs. The map clearly shows that housing prices directly correlate to commute times—something we've seen before. Valhouli points to the west side as evidence: "$1,600/sq.ft for the Upper West Side, to $800/sq.ft. for Morningside Heights, to $617 in Hamilton Heights, to $430 in Inwood."

One of the biggest surprises for the map makers was a section of Gravesend that averages $2,000 per square foot. In this Syrian orthodox community, houses go for $10 to $12 million, but in the rest of Gravesend, prices average $470/square foot. Valhouli points out that if this was just lumped in with the rest of the neighborhood, it would be completely invisible. On the other end of the spectrum, there are a surprising amount of neighborhoods that sell for about $200 per square foot.

· NYC's Housing Cost Myth [Medium]
· New York's Most—And Least—Affordable Areas, Mapped in 3D [BU]
· All coverage of Constantine Valhouli's work [Curbed]