Astoria, LIC Rents Drop As Rents In Elmhurst, Corona Rise: Study

ASTORIA/LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — Rents in New York City hit record lows during the first quarter of 2021, according to a new study, and while rents plummeted in northwestern Queens neighborhoods they rose elsewhere in the borough, highlighting disparities between neighborhoods.

The report, released by StreetEasy on Friday found that NYC rents, which have been precipitously dropping throughout the pandemic, hit record lows across the city during the past few months, including in Queens where rents dropped below $2,000 for the first time in eight years.

According to the study’s data, the rents in some neighborhoods in northwestern Queens, including Long Island City and Sunnyside, dropped by 6.7 percent and 11 percent respectively, with rents in Astoria plummeting more than 17 percent year-over-year.

Those drops are almost on-par with increases in rents in neighborhoods hard-hit by the pandemic, including East Elmhurst and North Corona, where rents grew by 4.5 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively.

The rise in North Corona is the largest percentage point increase in rent across the entirety of NYC, according to the study.

Matthew Murphy, Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center attributes this trend — which has persisted in Queens, and the city at large amid the pandemic — to differences in the opportunity for mobility that high- and low-income New Yorkers have.

“The pandemic accelerated the increased vacancies in higher-rent units, as renter households with the resources relocated” compared to lower-income households who weren’t able to move, he explained in a written statement to Patch.

Those lower-income households then found themselves in neighborhoods where “listed rents have increased” because “demand has remained high,” he explained, adding that “given this segmentation, low-income households are not seeing the benefit of rent decreases.”

Dr. Donald Tricarico, a professor of urban studies and sociology at Queensborough Community College in Bayside agrees, pointing out that “job insecurity and income insecurity” among lower-income residents means those people can’t move as easily as many of the borough’s wealthier residents who “left luxury buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods for their houses in the Hamptons” last March.

“I think that landlords in higher income areas who haven’t fully been able to fill their buildings can’t increase rent right now, but I think that they can if people are not going anywhere,” he said.

And, it’s not just northeastern and southeastern Queens where this segmented rent pattern has happened: Other lower-income areas of Queens predominantly populated by people of color, including Hollis, saw rent increases — or no rent changes at all, in the case of Rosedale, St. Albans, and South Jamaica — whereas rents fell by 7 and 8 percent in middle- and high-income residential neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Bayside, respectively.

Although StreetEasy economists speculate in the study that the city’s rent decreases won’t last forever, for Dr. Tricarico the pattern of segmented rent is a trend that will persist since “status has implications for mobility.”

“The elite residents of the city have choices that lower income, minority New Yorkers don’t have,” he said.

Read the full StreetEasy report here.