A recent Rent.com survey of New York renters found that 25 percent don’t want to date someone who lives outside their borough.
The percentage was almost equal across the boroughs, but Queens residents were the most willing to date people who live in other areas of the city, with 23 percent saying no to dating elsewhere.
Twenty-eight percent of Manhattan dwellers prefer to stay on their island to date, making it the least open to romance outside the borough.
“Ninety-nine percent of my Manhattan clients do not want an area code other than 917 or 212. They don’t want to date women in the boroughs,” said Janis Spindel, president and founder of Janis Spindel Serious Matchmaking and the online dating website 2lovetoday.com.
But Spindel says the discrimination goes both ways.
Currently, she has two clients, one who lives in Brooklyn and one from Long Island, who specifically requested no Manhattan women.
“City women are [their] own breed,” she said.
Though many of her clients, such as Wall Street men, gravitate towards a typical Manhattan woman, they’re not right for other men who aren’t into that stereotypically, Manhattan lifestyle, such as jetting off to the Hamptons on the weekend.
The Rent.com survey also found that the same percentage of women and men were willingly to date someone who lives in another borough.
But Spindel, who bases her business in Manhattan and matches clients from across the country, says women are more likely to travel or move for love.
Still, with more women than men in the city, women might miss out on a great guy if they discriminate by his borough.
“As long as you’re a subway ride away, it’s not a big deal,” she said.
