Never mind about the Knicks and the Yanks, the Mets and the Giants. New York City's true sport is real estate. All over the city, everyone talks about the ups and downs of the perpetually tight and expensive apartment market. In August, the New York Daily News cut through the hype of real estate brokers who portray in-house market surveys as the real state of the market and published the most accurate look possible at the overall state of the city rental market.
The Census Bureau posted the 1999 vacancy survey online in mid-summer. The data itself was in very good condition and required little cleaning. The surveys provided a first-ever look at exactly how much New York City rents rose during the 1990s and identified the neighborhoods hit with the biggest increases. The data showed that median household rents rose 36 percent citywide during the last decade.
In at least one Manhattan neighborhood, the increase was 67 percent. The paper brought the numbers to life by interviewing residents of neighborhoods where rents rose sharply and finding out what the increases meant to their lives. Although the Census Bureau doesn't conduct vacancy surveys for other cities and towns, the 2000 Census data will enable any reporter to conduct a similar analysis of local housing costs.