Upper West Side Rents Finally Stop Dropping: Study Finds

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — In what may be one of the surest signs yet that New York City is beginning to recover from the pandemic, rent prices have stopped their precipitous fall — including on the Upper West Side, a new study found.

The new study by StreetEasy, released Wednesday, examined real estate listings across the city during the month of April.

It found that after declining for 12 consecutive months, asking rents stabilized in April, with the citywide median rent rising to $2,499 — $4 higher than in March.

That signals that the city's deal-filled market, a haven for prospective renters, is on its way out. Still, prices are a far cry from where they stood in 2019, before the pandemic, when the median rent was $2,800.

On the Upper West Side, the median asking rent last month was $2,800 — a legitimate jump from the first quarter of this year — when the asking rent in the neighborhood was $2,717.

While rent prices in the neighborhood aren't falling anymore, the median asking rent of $2,800 on the Upper West Side in April is still down 17 percent from the same time last year.

Additionally, the April report shows a major discrepancy between the asking price for homes on the Upper West Side and their actual recorded sales price.

On the UWS, the median asking price for a home was $1,655,000 in April, which is actually up 6 percent from last year. The median recorded sales price for the month, though, was just $885,000 — more than 50 percent less than April 2020.

Here's all the information for the Upper West Side in the report for April:

• Median Asking Rent: $2,800
• Change From Last Year: -17.60 percent
• Median Asking Price: $1,655,000
• Change From Last Year: +6.80 percent
• Median Recorded Sales Price: $885,000
• Change From Last Year: -52.80 percent

"Not on solid ground"

StreetEasy economist Nancy Wu cautioned that New York is "not on solid ground just yet" when it comes to the stabilization of rent, citing high unemployment, a huge number of empty apartments and the likely persistence of work-from-home, which could shake up the city's geography.

Across Manhattan, median asking rents rose by $14 last month — up to $2,799. (The pre-pandemic figure, meanwhile, stood at $3,400.)

But "there are still deals to be had," StreetEasy writes, noting that a record-high 45.2 percent of Manhattan rentals offered at least a month of free rent as a concession in April.

Other notable trends include declining inventory as more available rentals get snatched up. Across the city, the number of open rentals shrunk by 26 percent last month compared to August's record high.

In Manhattan, there were 28,185 apartments up for rent last month — a 32 percent decline compared to August.

"The summertime, which in the past was peak renter season, will look very different this year," Wu said.

"Commute times have become obsolete for some, opening up flexibility for when to sign a lease. This means that city renters can take their time to move, and rents will creep back up slowly."

Patch reporter Nick Garber contributed to this report.