| For a good number of years now, renters of NYC | | | | any other price. It's a seemingly small difference |
| apartments have had the extreme displeasure of | | | | between average - or mean - rental rates, but it's an |
| paying the highest rents in the country. A new report | | | | important difference. |
| suggests that the city is entering 2008 with a | | | | Median rates are a better representative of what the |
| continuing hold on the unfortunate and smudged | | | | typical person pays, because it's not thrown off by |
| crown which signifies its role as the most expensive | | | | the super-high numbers - the luxury rental New York |
| city for renters in the country. | | | | City and San Francisco's low vacancy rates force |
| The new report - by the major California real estate | | | | prices upwards, but the regional inflation stemming |
| investment firm, Marcus & Millichap - suggests | | | | from the high income of New Yorkers and San |
| that, at least insofar as median rental rates, NYC | | | | Franciscans is what makes rental rates so |
| apartments far surpass those any other city in the | | | | astronomically high in these two cities. |
| country. The median, for those that always get them | | | | Of course, while this means that rental rates are |
| confused, is the number that is number that occurs | | | | acceptable for high income earners, it means that the |
| most often in a set. So, when we say New York | | | | working class in New York City is pressed harder by |
| City's apartments cost a median monthly rent of | | | | the high rental rates than in any other city in the |
| $2,922, what we are really saying is that more New | | | | country. |
| York apartments cost $2,922 for rent a month than | | | | |