Soaring rents make couples get together earlier in the US

Xin-rui Lee didn’t want to move in with her boyfriend at first.

They had been together for a year and eight months, but after a week of living together while on a trip to Mexico City, Lee remembers returning with a strong feeling that this was not a situation he wanted to make permanent.

“I eventually came to the conclusion that, living with a partner, I wouldn’t feel comfortable being as silly as I like to be sometimes,” said Lee, 26, who is a communications specialist.

“I was tired from work one night and I had some pot candy, but he was around the whole time and I just didn’t want him to notice it. I was just feeling too embarrassed.”

Her desire to live alone was slowly changing as the current realities of the rental market took hold. Lee’s landlord announced that her current rent would increase by $300 a month, and after a quick search online for rental properties, she came to the conclusion that moving in with her partner might be the right choice. With that, the two began looking for apartments together, and hope to find a place by the end of the next quarter.

With rents soaring in the United States in recent months, many couples are choosing to move in together sooner than they expected to be able to afford their rents, submit stronger real estate applications or find the ideal neighborhood. With pandemic restrictions easing and people returning to cities, the rental market is failing to keep up with demand.

In May, the median rent for an apartment in New York’s Manhattan area hit a record $4,000, according to real estate broker Douglas Elliman. In the United States as a whole, asking values ​​for leases were up 15% in May from the same month in 2020, according to real estate broker Redfin.

Many couples are now excited about taking the next step in their relationship, but new fears have also emerged, related to depending on someone else sooner than planned, both financially and in terms of location.

“Where is the exhaust port?”

Although Lee remains concerned about certain aspects of living with her boyfriend, she positively sees the opportunity to pool resources in order to create a better home.

“I want to have a cute and cozy house, and together this can become possible. We’ll be able to perfect the rugs. We’ll be able to perfect the art”, said Lee. “The lack of space for us to get some distance from each other worries me, but I’m also confident that we’ll be able to create a rhythm that works for us.”

“I’m a little anxious or fearful that moving in together will have a negative impact on our relationship, but it could also be a wonderful opportunity,” she said.

The anxiety that the couple feels may have good reasons. Arielle Kuperberg, an associate professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said, “When you move in with someone, separating from them becomes much more difficult. You would have to find a new apartment. You would have to cancel a contract or, even more complicated, continue to share the house with someone you are separated from”.

These additional barriers to a breakup mean that certain traits or disagreements that would have meant the end of a relationship before the couple lived together now have to be tolerated or resolved, Kuperberg said.

If you live with your boyfriend or girlfriend, “you are likely to share a bed with them. Where is the escape hatch?” said Sharon Sassler, co-author of “Cohabitation Nation” and professor of sociology at the School of Public Policy at Cornell University.

Even for couples who were already planning to share an apartment, the market messed up plans. Jennifer Gamarra, 25, and Michael Kaplan, 26, had been dating for two years and planned to find a new apartment and live together when their current leases expired in July.

They wanted to live on New York’s Upper West Side in a two-bedroom apartment and a building that offered additional amenities like a gym and bicycle storage space, so they filed their specs on StreetEasy and began their search.” My hope was that matching our budgets would allow us to find a place that was a little fancier,” he said.

Kaplan, who is a software engineer. But they quickly discovered that this would not be possible. “Many of the places we visited, even those priced over $5,000 a month, didn’t have comfortable living rooms, and there wasn’t adequate space to work from home,” Kaplan said.

The couple decided that Gamarra would simply move into the one-bedroom apartment where Kaplan lives, whose rent has risen from $2,200 to $3,000 a month.ll

While the two are happy to share the house, as they had hoped, there are new concerns arising from Gamarra’s move to Kaplan’s house.

“We wanted a new place where we could show our face, but I’m moving into his apartment, which creates the feeling that I’m going to live in his house, not our house,” said Gamarra, who is pursuing a doctorate. “Trying to make the apartment our first home together will be harder for me.”

The New York Times had interviewed a couple who decided not to participate in this story anymore after realizing that they disagreed about their reasons for sharing a house. The two work in the food service industry. While one said the high rent was a reason they shared an apartment, the other claimed that sharing a house was the next step in their relationship.

“Disagreeing is not the best recipe for success or satisfaction in a relationship. If, within a year, the partner who considered moving in together the right step to take wants an engagement, and the other doesn’t, what happens?”, he asked. Sassler.

But if the relationship is strong, sharing an apartment can be a great decision, she added. “When you wake up next to someone every day, you’ll find out if they make breakfast and serve it in bed. It’s not something that someone you only share an apartment with does,” she said.

This added romantic closeness is exactly what Kenneth Yeung, 23, a Brooklyn-based product manager, was hoping for.

Yeung and her boyfriend had been together for less than a year, and the two wanted to continue living in their neighborhood, Williamsburg, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment has risen by 25% in the last 12 months. Yeung was lucky to get an affordable place, and the two planned to share a one-bedroom apartment with monthly rent of $2,700 starting in July. Their dream was to buy a Noguchi coffee table and design a house according to their preferences.

“We would have preferred to wait at least for our relationship to complete a year,” Yeung said. “But with the current rental market and our strong desire to stay in the same neighborhood, we thought it made more sense to live together.”

However, after their first conversation with The New York Times, Yeung and her boyfriend decided to break up.

“The pressure created by having a firm date to move in together led us to re-evaluate whether this was a good decision at this time,” Yeung said. “And it created a lot of stress for us to make it work.”

Now Yeung will move into the apartment alone, and without someone to share the rent with, he will have to plan his budget meticulously. “I’m going to order less food, go out to dinner only once a week, stop ordering coffee delivery,” he said. “I’m going to try to cut out all these little everyday luxuries so I can pay the rent.” He also had to say goodbye to the dream of the Noguchi table.

And maybe not moving in with your romantic partner proves to be the best solution. “Now that the city is finally reopening, it feels like there’s a lot of life left to live. I was worried that living with a boyfriend would deprive me of this newfound freedom,” Yeung said. “I think the situation that existed is what led us to make a serious commitment so quickly.”

Translation by Paulo Migliacci