Average Rent = $2,000 a Month, for a Studio in Manhattan

[MishaK]

My wife, her sister and two friends once shared a loft studio in the financial district that was turned into ... are you ready for this? ... a 4-bedroom apartment! The main space of the studio was basically a large cube with a very high ceiling. They divided the cube into four squares. Two of the squares became two little bedrooms (just about enough room for a full size bed and a small dresser), one of the squares became a small living room and the other square a small dining area. Then they put in a second floor above the two bedroom squares with another two bedrooms of the same size on top of them. So basically, the four little bedrooms were very small and on the top floor you couldn't stand up straight if you were more than 5'4'', but the living room and dining area had the full ceiling height of the original layout. Thankfully, the place had a bona fide kitchen and bathroom as well as tons of closet space in the corridor. But the only thing that made this arrangement work was the fact that at any given time at least two of the girls had serious boyfriends with whom they were in fact living. My dad on a visit once happened to see this apartment - my wife was still my girlfriend then and we had only been going out for less than a year - and his comment was: "My god! She lives in a commune!"