Thousands Fled Midtown, Hell's Kitchen In 2020, New Data Shows

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN — As the pandemic swept New York last year, residents fled Midtown and Hell's Kitchen at some of the city's highest rates, according to a new study by the global real estate firm CBRE.

The study looked at 29 million change-of-address requests filed with the U.S. Postal Service last year, providing insight into which ZIP codes saw the most departures — and where residents went.

New York City, which was already shrinking before the pandemic, had the second-most net move-outs of any metro in the country in 2020, trailing only San Francisco, the study found. Meanwhile, Sun Belt cities like Austin and Charlotte saw population gains.

Within the city, dense, urbanized neighborhoods like Midtown, Hell's Kitchen, Lower Manhattan and Northern Brooklyn lost the most residents.

Indeed, the ZIP code with the biggest loss in New York state was 10016, covering Kips Bay and Murray Hill in Midtown East, which lost 6,371 residents in 2020.

Not far behind was Hell's Kitchen's 10019 ZIP code, which had 3,935 net move-outs — the fifth-most in New York.

Across Hell's Kitchen's three ZIP codes, nearly 24,500 people moved out in 2020, while about 14,900 moved in — a net loss of almost 9,600 residents.

That's a far greater exodus than the previous year, when the neighborhood had a net loss of about 1,900 people. (The Hell's Kitchen data was first reported by W42ST.)

Here is the 2020 move-out data for each Hell's Kitchen ZIP code:

• 10018: 2,634 move-ins, 5,183 move-outs — net loss of 2,549 residents, or 365 per 1,000 people
• 10019: 7,576 move-ins, 11,511 move-outs — net loss of 3,935 residents, or 87 per 1,000 people
• 10036: 4,689 move-ins, 7,794 move-outs — net loss of 3,105 residents, or 109 per 1,000 people

Most people who moved last year went only a short distance, often to a nearby county, the researchers found. Many of them were affluent young adults who had no children and were able to work remotely.

"The outflow from urban areas likely will subside as normal life resumes and lower rents lure back some who had moved out," they wrote.

Manhattan rent prices, which fell precipitously during the pandemic exodus, have shown signs of rebounding in recent months, suggesting that demand for urban living has begun to rise again.