New Yorkers can save 10 percent on rent by living 10 minutes from a subway stop

If you live in New York City, chances are you value being close to public transportation—so much so that proximity to a subway station is a convenience worth paying for. But how much more are New Yorkers paying to live near subway station? RentHop has analyzed the data to find out.

In a new study, the rental search engine looked at Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan to come up with maps that illustrate how rent typically decreases as you move further away from subway entrances. No surprise there, but there were a few other key findings that you may not have expected.

To calculate median rent by proximity to subway, RentHop utilized information found on the publicly available NYC dataset of MTA subway entrances. From there, they created “buffer areas” around subway entrances at varying distances until they found one that provided a large enough sample size with a significant number or listings. RentHop looked at listings from the last full year, removing any duplicates and analyzing apartments of different sizes.

In the the three boroughs analyzed, they found that apartments closest to a subway stop cost about six to eight percent more than the borough median, while apartments furthest from a station tend to cost about eight to ten percent less. In the Bronx, rents near the subway were actually cheaper than those further out; Renthop notes that this could be because of noise from the borough’s myriad above-ground stops, but the company admits it may also be due to a smaller sample size of rental data.

Since 90 percent of listings in Manhattan were within a quarter mile of a subway, Renthop chose to analyze smaller distance measurements. They found that apartments less than a two minute walk, or 1/16th of a mile, typically charged 4.2 percent more in rent, while those located 1/6th and 1/8th of a mile from a subway entrance were the cheapest.

In Brooklyn, apartments within 1/16th of a mile of a subway entrance had rents that were around 8.4 percent higher than the borough median. Queens, which suffers from poor subway access compared to Brooklyn and Manhattan, has higher rent prices for apartments located within 1/6th and 1/5th of a mile. But RentHop also found that as you move further away from the subway in Queens, you’ll find fewer apartment buildings and higher rates of homeownership, along with less densely populated neighborhoods.

The bottom line: if you’re willing to walk a little bit further, you could see some savings on your rent. A ten-minute walk could save you up to ten percent off your rent, concludes RentHop.

You can read the full study for yourself here.

• A 10 Minute Walk Could Be Worth 10% Off Your Rent [RentHop]