TV Shows an Unrealistic Rent Picture

Professionals remodelers often complain about how popular home renovation shows paint an unrealistic picture of the time and effort it actually takes to rehab a kitchen or redo a bathroom. The same theory holds true for television shows in general, which often present a romantic notion about multifamily rents.

Indeed, production companies rarely tell viewers how much their favorite characters are paying for their apartments. But a new study by QR Code Generator tells us what Monica’s, Sheldon’s and Carrie’s places would have cost today if they actually existed. For the most part, the numbers aren’t pretty.

The iconic “Friends” apartment

Take Monica Geller’s two-bedroom unit in the West Village, for instance. On the long-running “Friends” sitcom, now in re-runs, it was portrayed as a rent-controlled apartment. Her grandmother left her a fixed-lease which allowed her and her roommate, Rachel Green, to pay only $200 a month in 1994. Today, that’s equivalent to around $426.

The show was one of the few that explained how Monica and Rachel could afford such a luxurious space. Most others don’t even mention it. But research from QR Code Generator says that if that place was real, it would likely rent for $7,095 today. That’s a big, big difference.

Just like home improvement shows, which make it seem as though knocking down walls and redoing entire kitchens are a walk in the park, sitcoms and other TV favorites “instill unrealistic expectations” when it comes to cost and living in big cities like the Big Apple, the report says. And that’s especially true of re-runs that are set in the mid-1990s.

“The reality is that most of these apartments are far more expensive than they seem, as they’re located in popular neighborhoods of major cities,” Marc Porcar of QR Code Generator said in the report. “When combined with today’s average prices, this highlights just how unrealistic TV expectations can be.”

Your favorite TV home, by the numbers

Monica’s apartment isn’t the most expensive of those studied, however. That spot belongs to best-selling author Richard Castle’s “castle” in New York’s SoHo District.

In the show “Castle,” the novelist works with Detective Kate Beckett as a consultant to overcome his writer’s block and return to writing thriller works of fiction. His two-bedroom apartment, where his teenage daughter also lives, would run a whopping $11,271 per month today, as SoHo remains one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods. But rent is never a topic.

In “How I Met Your Mother,” Ted Mosby and Marshall Eriksen share an apartment on the Upper West Side. If that set was a real two-bedroom unit, it would likely rent for $7,658 a month, the average for the area.

On the other side of the country, the fictional loft shared by four friends in “New Girl” was supposedly in the Art District of Los Angeles. It was originally a three-bedroom unit that was split into four bedrooms to make room for the new girl Jess Day. A similar loft apartment in the pricey neighborhood would run $5,177 on average at today’s rates, according to the report.

Nearby Pasadena was the setting for Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter’s apartment in “The Big Bang Theory.” The two occupied a two-bedroom apartment in the fictional Los Robles building, a block from City Hall and adjacent to a lamp store.

Today, their fourth floor unit would rent for an average of $3,121. And that’s even with the perpetually broken elevator, which wasn’t repaired until the show’s final episode. No word on Penny’s one-bedroom apartment across the hall.

Back in New York, Carrie Bradshaw, the star in “Sex and the City,” lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the Upper East Side. At today’s rates, the lovelorn writer would be paying $4,392 on average. Could she actually afford it while still purchasing all of those Manolo’s? Maybe not.