How Much Jerry Seinfeld’s Apartment In The NBC Sitcom Would Rent For

A big part of watching sitcoms is suspending disbelief. Characters who behave ridiculously get themselves into a variety of comedic situations and the audience doesn’t question it all too much because, well, it’s a sitcom. One of the most unbelievable parts of most sitcoms is that the often highly dysfunctional people at the center of them are somehow able to afford decent places to live. When the show is set in New York City, that becomes even more unlikely. The troubled 20-somethings that made up the cast of “Friends” couldn’t possibly afford their West Village apartments no matter how great the “rent control” in their building was, for example. Similarly, the fictionalized Jerry Seinfeld of the hit 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld” would be in the exact same boat unless he were much more successful as a comedian than the show seems to depict.

While Seinfeld never says what he pays for his apartment, it is possible to piece it together using the address of the building used for the exterior shots of the show, which features comparable apartments in the area. It’s not quite as unbelievable as Peter Parker being able to afford an apartment in Manhattan as a college student, but Seinfeld’s place is probably still way out of his budget.

The building used for the exterior of Jerry’s one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment on “Seinfeld” is located at 129 West 81st Street, just a few blocks from Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History. The apartment would be approximately 800 square feet, give or take, using the furniture to figure out scale. One-bedroom units in the building have a rent estimate of around $3,400 according to Zillow.com, although no square footage measurements are listed and the apartments look a bit smaller than Jerry’s. Per Apartment Advisor, an apartment the same size as Jerry’s in that neighborhood would cost somewhere around $4,500 a month, which is an awful lot for a stand-up comedian to pull in at his level on the show.

Real estate has gone up and down some in New York City since the time of “Seinfeld,” which aired from 1989 to 1998, but it hasn’t changed enough that Seinfeld’s apartment would have somehow been much, much cheaper. Of course, writers always love to use the idea of “rent control” to explain how these apartments are affordable for their characters. Still, while rent control in New York is different than in many other U.S. states, it wouldn’t be enough for Jerry to afford that apartment. Even if Jerry could afford the $4.5k a month, however, there’s one other major problem: his apartment layout is physically impossible.

Because Seinfeld’s apartment has to work as a multi-cam sitcom set, that means the entire “fourth wall” has to be completely open to the studio audience. That means that it’s impossible for Seinfeld’s apartment to exist in the real world since it’s missing a whole section. The door to his bedroom also changes sides a bit early in the first season, making it as canonically confusing as Charlie and Frank’s apartment on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” On top of all that, there isn’t a whole lot for the characters on “Seinfeld” to do when they’re not delivering lines in Jerry’s place. Thankfully, Julia Louis-Dreyfus came up with a great solution that involved keeping the action focused on Jerry’s fridge giving her plenty of things to do while she chats with Jerry, Kramer (Michael Richards), and George (Jason Alexander).

There is one way for “Seinfeld” fans to experience Jerry’s apartment, though, at least a little. Yes, there’s actually a LEGO set of Jerry’s apartment that people can build and have their own miniature misadventures in. Just watch out for a teeny tiny Kramer throwing the door open.