I Toured a $2,200-a-Month Chicago Apartment to Compare to My NYC Home | Invesloan.com

I rent a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in Queens. The 650-square-foot rental has an open-floor-plan kitchen and living space, as well as an additional small room I use for storage and recreation.

It’s worth noting that my apartment lacks a few amenities. There are no laundry machines in the unit or on-site, and there’s no oven — though I do have a stove top and a microwave.

My Queens apartment is about a 40-minute train commute to Manhattan. The rental I toured was about 45 minutes from Downtown Chicago by train in the Woodlawn neighborhood.

The street was quiet and mostly empty when I visited on a weekday afternoon. Nearby, I noticed some restaurants and grocery stores within walking distance.

Situated on the top floor, the unit had a front entrance used by both tenants and a private back entrance with a small patio. It’s also worth noting that the rental comes with a parking spot.

My apartment in Queens has just one shared entrance, and tenants can pay extra for a parking spot, though I don’t have a car.

At 1,400 square feet, the Chicago rental was more than twice the size of my Queens apartment.

The kitchen was larger than mine and had more counter space. It was also sleek and modern, with marble countertops, a geometric backsplash, and stainless steel appliances, from the oven to the microwave.

The living space behind the kitchen was also larger than mine. It had three tall windows facing the front yard.

My apartment has two closets — one in the bedroom and one by the front door. Both are quite small. So I was excited by the amount of storage space in the Chicago rental.

If I were to live in this rental, I’d use one of these bedrooms as a home office and the other as a recreational room.

The primary bedroom had a walk-in closet, an in-room bathroom, and more light fixtures than the other two bedrooms had.

Both were modern and sleek with marble floors and contrasting backsplashes.

Although the laundry closet was empty during my tour, the real-estate agent told me the rental included a washer and dryer that would be installed later.

In Chicago, I could have a home that’s sleeker and more modern than my Queens apartment. I could have double the space, two more bedrooms, and an extra bathroom. I could have amenities I lack entirely, like an outdoor space, in-unit laundry, and an oven.

I don’t see myself leaving NYC anytime soon, but sometimes, when I’m spending on laundry services or craving some homemade cookies, I daydream about a more luxurious life in Chicago.