Upper East Side Rents Drop Even Further In 2021, Report Finds

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The new year has not ushered in any changes to New York City's declining real estate market, as rents continued to drop across the five boroughs in January — including on the Upper East Side, a new report found.

The median asking rent for Upper East Side apartments last month was just $2,400 — a 27 percent decline from this time last year, and a slight drop even from the fourth quarter of 2020, when the pandemic-induced rent spiral was already underway.

Home sales, meanwhile, had a median asking price of $1,595,000 on the Upper East Side — a six percent drop year-over-year, but a slight increase from where they stood in late 2020.

The data comes from a new study by the real estate website Streeteasy, which found that the continued decline in rents and home prices is caused by the large amount of homes that remain on the market.

Across Manhattan, typical rent last month was $2,750 — the lowest it has been since March 2010, and a 15.5 percent drop from last year. Brooklyn and Queens had median asking rents of $2,395 and $2,000, respectively.

In a silver lining for sellers, however, home-buying activity has surged despite the price drops, according to Streeteasy: the number of pending sales in Manhattan jumped by nearly 31 percent year-over-year, caused mostly by luxury homes.

Despite its ritzy reputation, the Upper East Side was far from Manhattan's most expensive neighborhood last month. That honor belongs to Tribeca, where the median home sale price was more than $4.3 million, and Central Park South, whose median rents led all of New York at $6,900.

Explore the full data and read Streeteasy's market report here.

Related coverage:

• Upper East Side Rents Plummeted In 2020, Study Finds
• UES Rents Plummet But Essential Workers Don't Benefit: Study