NYC Rents Hit Lowest Rates In Years, Study Says

NEW YORK CITY — A silver lining for New York City renters amid the coronavirus pandemic kept getting brighter.

Asking rents for apartments hit record lows during the first quarter of 2021, according to a new StreetEasy study.

In fact, median asking rents in Manhattan reached an average of $2,700 a month, which is the cheapest on StreetEasy records dating back to 2010. Before the pandemic, the average Manhattan rent was $3,417 per month, the study states.

Similar numbers existed in other boroughs, according to the study.
In Brooklyn, the median asking rent for the first quarter was $2,390, the lowest in 11 years. In Queens, the median asking rent, $1,999, dropped below $2,000 for the first time in eight years.

Nancy Wu, a economist with StreetEasy, said she believes rental rates should stay low for now, though maybe not for long as weather warms up and more New Yorkers get vaccinated.

"Renters don't need to rush to sign a new lease this second to claim a great deal though," she said in a statement. "It will take time for prices to rebound. But the rentals market does react to economic activity much more quickly than the sales market. As the city continues to recover, competition will slowly pick up."

The lows continue a citywide trend of rent consistently dropping over the last year.

The drops have prompted a glut of apartments — more than 50 percent of unrented apartments in Manhattan, according to a recent UrbanDigs study — being kept off the market by landlords waiting for prices to go back in their favor.

StreetEasy also reported the number of units currently offering free months of rent was increasing. In Manhattan, 44 percent of landlords advertised at least a month of free rent, a figure 22-percent higher than last year. Rental concessions also are on the rise in Brooklyn and Queens.

The number of rental units available is one of the key factors in driving rental prices and concessions. According to StreetEasy, rental inventory in Manhattan and Brooklyn was twice as a high as it was during the first quarter of 2020, while in Queens inventory was 97-percent higher. Though the number of available apartments has fallen since last summer.

StreetEasy also offered its data about where renters might find some of the best deals these days.

While numbers hit new lows in Manhattan overall, the publication said Midtown saw the most dramatic annual decline in rents with a decrease of 14.8 percent, falling to $2,895. Meanwhile, the Upper East Side saw its rents drops 13.9 percent in the last year, with a median rental at $2,400 in Q1. Farther uptown, neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Inwood and Harlem saw their Q1 rents at their cheapest since 2015.

In North Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the median rent for a one-bedroom was $2,500, the lowest its been in more than 10 years. In Queens, rents have fallen the most in areas like Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside.

A new study from RentHop also suggested that New Yorkers hunting for deals on one-bedroom apartments don't have to look far from the nearest subway stop. Rents fell around 418 of 473 stops across the city during the pandemic, according to data.