Here's How Much Upper West Side Rent Prices Fell In 2020: Study

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — The New York City housing market plummeted in 2020, and renters looking to move to the Upper West Side will pay almost 25 percent less per month than they would have last year thanks to the nosediving prices amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new study found.

StreetEasy, a New York City real estate website, recently released a study that compared the year over year changes in the asking prices of homes, rents, and actual recorded sales prices for every major neighborhood in the city.

The study specifically compared the prices in November 2019 to November 2020.

The Upper West Side saw its median rent asking price drop 23.80 percent in the period, according to the StreetEasy report.

Here's the complete data for the Upper West Side:

• Median Home Asking Price 2020: $1,395,000
• YoY Change From 2019: -21.50 percent
• Median Rent Asking Price 2020: $2,800
• YoY Change From 2019: -23.80 percent

While the home and rent asking prices dropped from November 2019 to November 2020 on the Upper West Side, the median recorded sales price in the neighborhood actually went up.

The neighborhood saw a 35.90 percent increase in the median recorded sales price of homes during the period. The increase is most likely down to a handful of very expensive apartments selling on the Upper West Side.

Overall, rents in Manhattan dropped by 12.7 percent from November 2019 to November 2020. The figure was the most of the three boroughs analyzed in the study and also a larger drop seen during the Great Recession, where rents in the borough dropped by about 10 percent.

"We expected the rental market to match the weakness seen during the Great Recession, but the fact that the market has surpassed that level in less than one year shows how serious the crisis caused by the pandemic has been," said StreetEasy Economist Nancy Wu, in the study.

You can read about the methodology for the study here, and check out all the data for yourself on the StreetEasy website.

Patch reporter Anna Quinn contributed to this article.