A roommate is the cheapest way to live in New York — until you count what it costs.

Everybody arriving in New York on a budget reaches the same conclusion within about a day: get a roommate. It is the obvious answer, it is what almost everyone does, and for a great many people it is the right answer.

This page is not an argument against it. It is the arithmetic, done properly, plus the part nobody puts in the listing — what actually goes wrong in a share, and why it is almost never the rent.

Two things to say plainly before the numbers. First, we have no roommate service and we are not going to find you one; every room at Stagg is a private studio with its own bathroom and its own entrance. Second, the honest answer to "is it cheaper to live alone in New York" is *sometimes*, and it depends almost entirely on one variable that is invisible when you are browsing listings.

The number in the listing is not the number you pay

A room advertised at $1,600 a month is advertising the rent. What arrives with it, in some combination, is this:

A broker fee. A payment to the agent who showed you the apartment, charged to you rather than the landlord, often around a month's rent. It appears at the paperwork stage. Plenty of listings carry none — but you have to know to ask.

A guarantor. If you have no US credit history, a landlord has nothing to score you on. The usual remedy is a US-based guarantor earning many times the rent. If you do not have one, the commercial substitute is a guarantor service, which charges a fee for the same undertaking.

Furniture. An unfurnished New York room is genuinely unfurnished. Bed, mattress, desk, lamp, wardrobe — bought on arrival and given away on departure, at roughly full price and roughly nothing respectively.

Utilities and internet. Split between however many of you there are, billed monthly, and larger in July than you expect, because a New York summer means air conditioning.

A deposit. Refundable in principle. In practice it is cash out of your hand for the length of the stay, and getting it back is a section of this page on its own.

None of these are unusual or improper. They are simply invisible at the moment you are comparing $1,600 against something else, which is the moment the decision actually gets made.

Four months, one person, modelled both ways

The shared room is modelled twice below, because the gap between the two is large and showing only the expensive version would be dishonest.

Assumptions. Four months, treated as 17.3 weeks (52 ÷ 12 × 4). Stagg's Studio Basic is $625 a week, and that is the whole rate — furniture, electricity, gas, heat, water, air conditioning, trash, sewer and Wi-Fi are inside it. Figures dated ****.

In the first column, the roommate is not cheaper. $2,800 a month against $2,708, and you still share a bathroom. Every dollar of the difference — fee, guarantor, furniture, utilities — was invisible when you were comparing $1,600 against $2,708, and unavoidable by the time you found out.

In the second column, the roommate is cheaper, by about $680 a month. That is a real and substantial saving, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What you give up for it is the private bathroom, the private entrance, and a counterparty who is a company rather than a stranger on a listings site. Plenty of people take that trade and are right to.

So the answer to "is it cheaper to live alone" is: it depends on whether there is a broker fee and a guarantor service in the deal. With them, no. Without them, yes, clearly. That single question is worth more than an evening of browsing.

And time cuts against us. The fee, the guarantor and the furniture are one-off costs, so the longer you stay the more they spread out. Run the same illustrative figures over a full year and the shared room comes to roughly $2,100 a month even *with* fees, against $2,708 at Stagg. Past about a year, the shared room wins on cost in both scenarios. This model is built for stays of a few months, which is what we are built for; if you are planning to be here for years, take the roommate and the savings.

What goes wrong is rarely the money

Most shares work out. The ones that do not tend to fail on the same four things, and none of them appear in the rent.

There is often no lease behind the arrangement. A great many rooms are let informally by an existing tenant, sometimes without the landlord's knowledge. If that is your situation you are not a tenant, you are a guest of a tenant, and your position rests entirely on their goodwill and their own tenancy continuing. Ask who holds the lease and ask to see it. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.

Deposits go missing when there is no paper trail. Money handed over by transfer with no signed agreement, no inventory and no photographs is money you are relying on somebody's character to return. New York law does regulate residential deposits, but protection you cannot evidence is protection you do not have. Photograph the room on day one, get the amount and the return terms in writing, and never wire a deposit for a room nobody you trust has seen — sublet scams target out-of-town arrivals specifically.

Joint tenancy makes you liable for other people. Where everyone signs one lease, the obligation is typically joint and several — which means if a housemate leaves in month five, the landlord can look to the people still there for the whole rent, not for their share of it. Most people discover this in month five. Ask whether the lease is joint or whether each room is let separately, before you sign.

Schedules and standards do not negotiate. This is the one that actually ends shares. Someone works nights. Someone cooks at midnight. Someone's partner is there five days a week. Someone's definition of clean is not yours. These are small things that become the texture of every day, and unlike rent they cannot be renegotiated, only endured or escaped.

The point is not to frighten anybody out of a share. It is that the risk sits in the structure, not in the rent — and the rent is the part people spend all their time on.

Questions to ask before you send anybody money

Who holds the lease, and can I see it? The first question, and the most informative.

Is the lease joint, or is my room let separately? Decides whether you can be pursued for somebody else's rent.

Is there a broker fee, and do I need a guarantor? The two variables that decide the entire cost comparison above.

What is the deposit, when is it returned, and what can be deducted? In writing, with an inventory.

What is actually included, and what is split? Electricity especially.

How long has everyone else been here, and how long are they staying? A housemate leaving mid-term is your problem too.

Stagg has no roommates, which is the whole offer

Every room here is a private studio with its own ensuite bathroom and its own entrance off the hallway. Nothing inside the room is shared with anyone — not the bathroom, not the desk. There is no roommate to vet, no joint lease, no deposit dispute with a stranger, and no one else's dishes.

The building is a 1902 landmark at 12 West 44th Street, one block north of Bryant Park and a six-minute walk from Grand Central. There are three studio types: Studio Basic at $625 a week, the most affordable with an ensuite, with limited natural light; Studio Plus at $695, brighter and larger; Studio King at $745, the largest. No studio has an oven or a stove — each has a mini-fridge, microwave, coffee maker and kettle, and the building has a shared eat-in kitchen for anything needing a hob.

The honest limitations, in the same spirit as the rest of this page: the minimum term is nine months, the deposit is four weeks' rent — $2,500 on a Studio Basic, more cash up front than a typical room-share deposit — and if you are staying for years rather than months, the arithmetic above says take the roommate.

Frequently asked questions

Is it cheaper to live alone in New York?

Not usually on the headline rent, and sometimes yes on the total. Against a brokered share with a guarantor service, a Studio Basic at Stagg works out about $92 a month cheaper over four months. Against a direct share with no fees, the shared room is about $680 a month cheaper. The fees are the whole difference.

Does Stagg help find roommates?

No. There are no shared apartments here — every room is a private studio, so there is no roommate to match you with.

What is the shortest stay?

Nine months. Below that, an extended-stay hotel or a co-living operator will serve you better than we will — the co-living comparison is here.

What is included in the rent?

Everything. Furniture, electricity, gas, heat, water, air conditioning, trash, sewer and Wi-Fi are covered by the weekly rate. There is no separate utility bill and no broker fee.

If you would rather not have a roommate, say when

Tell us roughly when you would arrive and which studio interests you. We will come back with what is free and what it costs, within one business day. Nothing is charged until you have seen the terms, and you can write to info@stagg.live instead.

[Enquire about a room →](/contact)

See the three studios: Studio Basic · Studio Plus · Studio King

*Rates are quoted weekly and billed every two weeks. Availability changes; please confirm before you book travel.*