February Is Best Time To Rent An Apartment In NYC, Study Finds

NEW YORK, NY — Now might be a good time to start apartment-hunting. New York City rents are cheapest in February, when the weather is cold and transient college students are settled in for the spring semester, according to a study published Monday by the real estate website RentHop.

A one-bedroom apartment goes for a $3,000 median monthly rent in February, $171 cheaper than in June, when rents hit their peak, RentHop's review found. That 5.4-percent diffeence adds up to a savings of more than $2,000 annually.

Timing makes an even bigger difference for two-bedroom apartments — they go for a median rent of $3,400 in February, 5.3 percent less than the $3,591 median price in June. That means an annual savings of nearly $2,300.

Rents rise in the early summer as thousands of recent college graduates move to the city to start new jobs, RentHop says. New York also has a large number of students who come to the city for school each year, the review says.

RentHop pulled apartment prices from neighborhoods in the 10 largest U.S. cities from 2011 to 2017 to determine each city's median rent at different times throughout the year.

New York's prices follow a national pattern in which rents are lowest between December and March and peak between May and October, RentHop found. In addition to college students moving in and out, weather plays a role — the study found some correlation between rent and temperature variation in the cheapest and most expensive months.

Rent is typically most expensive in New York, but renting at the right time can save more money in the Big Apple than anywhere else. The difference between the lowest and highest average rents in a given year are the largest here both in terms of dollar amount and percentage of the monthly rent.

Second place goes to Los Angeles, where rents are around 4 percent lower in November, when a one-bedroom unit goes for $2,000, than in June, when one goes for $2,085.

Timing matters least in Miami, the study found. There's only a 2.5 percent difference between the median $2,000 rent in December and the $2,051 rent in July.

(Lead image by LEEROY Agency via Pixabay)