Pretty cool visualizations, but I would take the accuracy of the data with a grain of salt until I saw the source data. There's no universal map of neighborhoods in NYC, and I think that every New Yorker has a different sense of where certain neighborhoods start and begin. I'd also question incentive alignment regarding the real estate sites they used to cull the data. If they are using the real estate site's self-reported neighborhoods for these listings, I think that everyone can relate to the situation whereby a real estate agent tells you that a certain place is a "steal for the Upper East Side/(generic, more upscale neighborhood)," but when you go out to the apartment it's actually a few blocks into Harlem/(not so upscale area). Such vagaries in the listings would distort the prices per square foot for these boundary areas, but leave the solidly expensive ones alone, which is perhaps why areas like Central Park South (well defined geographically, and buffered by upscale areas) stand out.
I would imagine that the listings have lat/lngs (or at least geocodable street addresses), and the author has assigned them a neighbourhood by seeing which polygon the point intersects with. So real estate agents lying about what neighbourhood a property is in wouldn't matter.
Trulia uses lat/lon to determine a property's neighborhood. While neighborhood borders are often subjective, they do the best they can to meet the expectations of public consensus.
I've lived in NY all my life, in both Manhattan and the Bronx. I also used to go to Staten Island weekly. Here are some notes:
* The Bronx:
I lived in Woodlawn. I think it's very interesting that it's one of the most affordable areas to live considering it was recently reported as one of the safest places in the Bronx.
It also has fair demographic diversity, is extremely close to public transportation (buses run through the area and it's all within walking distance of Metro-North, 30 minutes from Grand Central). I lived in a three bedroom apartment with all utilities for $2400 a month.
Really, great place to live. If anyone is considering a place in NYC with easy access to Manhattan that is safe and affordable, look into Woodlawn.
To contrast this, Riverdale is also a nice area, but it's technically not as safe (parts of it are wealthy, but most of it is not). The safest areas are the colleges (Manhattan College and CUNY Lehman are both in Riverdale and their campuses are the hubs of that area). Transportation access is about the same.
* Staten Island
Amazingly cheap, but at the same time, you can't get to any of the wealthy areas of the island without going through a slum. It's literally a stereotypical case of the wealthy living on the top of a giant hill overlooking the working class/poor who live at the bottom/outskirts of the island.
That said, the neighborhoods at the top of Staten Island, the most expensive area, were filled with mansions and were absolutely magnificent to drive through. Naturally, this was close to the large liberal arts college there, Wagner.
From Woodlawn you can take buses to 3 different subway trunk lines, with access to both the East Side and West Side, in addition to an Express Bus to Midtown East and the Metro-North to Grand Central. Those are pretty decent transit options. Unless you're fortunate enough to live in the closer-in areas of Queens or Brooklyn, or Manhattan itself, those also the only options for "most NYers". Aside from 24-hour subway access to the city, living within the city limits, as opposed to Westchester, also gives you the perk of being able to hail a yellow cab and get home for a reasonable rate instead of doing the livery cab thing.
See here for a map showing that ~20% (eyeballed) of Brooklyn by area is likely in the same boat as the people in Woodlawn.
That being said, I'm not quite sure that I believe that their definition of Woodlawn is completely accurate, nor do I believe that it's the cheapest neighborhood in the Bronx. If the 3D-bars on the map are to be believed, it looks like Woodlawn (the area immediately to the east of the green park (Van Cortlandt) in the north center of the Bronx) and Wakefield (east of Woodlawn) are lumped together. Adding to personal experience, this map [1] suggests a pretty big wealth disparity between Woodlawn and Wakefield, with a difference of ~$20k in median household income. The border between the two is generally taken to be the Bronx River Parkway/Metro-North, and the 3D-map bars in the submission seem to gloss over that border. I would venture to say that Wakefield has a bit lower rent than Woodlawn, and that Wakefield is perhaps the cheapest neighborhood in the Bronx, but not Woodlawn.
Fair point. I live in Westchester now, and most of Westchester is not within reasonable walking distance of Metro North for a daily, morning commute. All of Woodlawn is.
Thank you for the kind words and thoughtful replies. This project was amazing fun to do with my friend and collaborator, Cat Callaghan.
We agree with the feedback - and we hope to develop some more robust visualizations soon. These are ideas that we're working on, and this was a proof of concept in order to explore some directions and possibilities. That said, we worked with third-party data from the leading real estate sites and averaged those in order to account for any outliers. This is an early iteration, and we hope to get more granular soon.
I love how the two of you came up with the bar chart overlaid upon a city map to show the relative price per square foot. It's so intuitive to read and understand, and personally, I too believe this makes the most sense, rather than heat maps.
Because, using a data map like this, prospective home buyers can look at
1) their budget -- how much total $$ they can spend, including downpayment, and then
2) their minimum sq foot requirements (ex: might have kids and need atleast 1,000 sq ft) and
using 1) divided by 2) arrive at the Price / Sq Foot that they can afford.
Then they can use your map, and immediately identify neighborhood within the neighborhood that are likely to have a place within their budget and sq foot requirements.
Would be a great tool for potential home buyers. You could try this as a service in 1 city, and then turn it into a startup that services metros around the world -- Hong Kong, Sydney, Bombay etc - for a small 1-time or recurring fee. You could also sell the service to real estate agencies, who use it to narrow down neighborhoods for their clients based on the 2 criteria mentioned above.
You get the idea.
p.s. Please make one for San Francisco if you can :) :)
Given the percentage of NYers who rent, I think a similar map for rental prices would be super interesting -- even more interesting would be to see any areas whose rental and purchase prices don't line up.
