Asking Prices For Bayside Homes Are Up $80K From Last Month

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — The asking price for a home in Bayside jumped nearly $80,000 between March and April of this year, according to a new study released by StreetEasy, reflecting people’s growing interest in moving from more densely populated areas in the city into single-family homes in the outer boroughs amid the pandemic.

The study, which broke down the citywide real estate market by neighborhood, found that people are asking $577,000 for homes in Bayside in April 2021, compared to March of this year, when the median asking price in the neighborhood was $499,000.

Not only does this shift substantiate claims that Bayside’s housing market is heating up, it also coincides with the gradual rebound of New York City’s housing market as a whole.

‘A lot of interest’ in Bayside

At the beginning of May, broker Bianca Colasuonna, who's been working in Queens for 17 years, told The Brick Underground that there’s recently been an unprecedented interest from buyers in eastern areas of the borough that are farthest from Manhattan — including in Bayside.

Bayside's "gorgeous views of the water" and mix of condo and single-family homes has become a hot commodity, she said, pointing out that Queens Village has become another desirable neighborhood.

According to the StreetEasy study, the median asking price in that neighborhood has increased over 11 percent since last year, up to $689,0000.

New York’s “market on the mend”

After rents in the city precipitously fell for 12 consecutive months, asking rents stabilized in April, with the citywide median rent rising to $2,499 — $4 higher than in March.

Rents in Bayside are also nearing their pre-pandemic prices, with the median asking rent amounting to $1,850 — only 1.3 percent less than what it was pre-pandemic.

However, StreetEasy economist Nancy Wu cautioned that New York is "not on solid ground just yet" when it comes to the stabilization of rent, citing high unemployment, a huge number of empty apartments and the likely persistence of work-from-home, which could shake up the city's geography.

Queens had the most significant uptick in rents citywide, and open rental inventory in the borough continued to soar as the number of open rentals shrunk across the city as a whole.

Across The World’s Borough, median asking rent rose by $50 last month, up to $2,050, and there were actually 14 more open units this April compared to August’s then-record high.

While a high number of available rentals could signal an overall decrease in rent — as has been the case for the past year — the simultaneous increase in rents and available units in Queens points to a different phenomenon.

When Patch spoke to Matthew Murphy, Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center, about rent changes in March, he pointed out that rents have risen and fallen across the borough in trends largely segmented by race and income.

While rents decreased in some of the borough’s primarily white, wealthy neighborhoods, they rose in some central Queens neighborhoods, which are among the hardest-hit by the pandemic citywide — a trend that has persisted in Queens, and the city at large amid the pandemic.

According to Murphy, 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."

This trend has not entirely dissipated in April, as rents have continued to rise in hard-hit neighborhoods including Flushing and The Rockaways, while dropping in by as much as 15 percent in high-income neighborhoods like Astoria and Long Island City.

Read the full StreetEasy study here.