Manhattan Rents Hit Record Low In 2021, Study Finds

NEW YORK, NY — As New York City's real estate market continues limping into 2021, no borough has been more affected than Manhattan, whose asking prices hit record lows in recent months — according to a new study.

The new study by StreetEasy, released Friday, examined real estate listings across the city during the first quarter of 2021.

It found that the median asking rent in Manhattan was just $2,700 — the lowest on record for the borough dating back to 2010, and a 16.8 percent drop compared to the same time last year.

In the first quarter of 2020, just before COVID-19 swept the city, the median asking rent in Manhattan was $3,417 — more than $700 higher than the present rate.

Other boroughs have had meaningful drops as well. Brooklyn's median asking rent of $2,390 is its lowest since 2011, while Queens dropped to $1,999 — the first time it has been below $2,000 in eight years, according to the report.

Here are the Manhattan neighborhoods with the steepest year-over-year rent drops:

• Nolita: 30 percent drop ($2,625 median asking rent)
• Lower East Side: 28 percent drop ($2,665 median asking rent)
• Little Italy: 27.3 percent drop ($2,325 median asking rent)
• Marble Hill: 25.8 percent drop ($1,678 median asking rent)
• Greenwich Village: 24.9 percent drop ($3,000 median asking rent)

When it came to broader geographic areas, Midtown had the biggest annual rent decline, at 14.8 percent. It was trailed by the Upper East Side, where median rents fell by 13.9 percent.

The borough's most modest drops occurred in Upper Manhattan, where rents fell by only 9.4 percent in the area that includes Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood. Still, the $2,700 median rent in Upper Manhattan is its lowest figure since 2015.

Meanwhile, some outer-borough neighborhoods failed to drop at all: North Corona, Queens and Marine Park in Brooklyn both saw rents rise by upwards of 16 percent compared to 2020.

According to StreetEasy economist Nancy Wu, the low rents could last into the summer as vaccinated New Yorkers begin to move around and put their apartments up for lease.

"With the weather getting warmer and more people rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated, New Yorkers are starting to feel a sense of normalcy," Wu said. "As this continues, the rate at which apartments come off the market will continue to ramp up."

As the city recovers from the crisis, however, the rental market will likely return to normalcy more quickly than the sales market — and "competition will slowly start to pick up," Wu said.

Read the full StreetEasy report here.