Houses For Rent in New York

New Yorkers returning to the office reckon with an overheated rental market

Ghosting, live bidding, long lines and fewer apartments: This is what it’s like renting in New York City this summer.

As New Yorkers return to the city — or arrive for the first time — with expectations to return to work or in-person classes in the fall, they have flooded the rental market looking for anything they can find.

According to recent data from real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman, more new leases, excluding renewals, were signed in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the northwest part of Queens last month than any other July in over 10 years.

“Everybody who you speak to in the industry knows that this is a crazy, crazy market now,” said Raymond Gani, a real estate broker for Misrahi Realty Group. “I don’t think it’s ever been a summer where there has been so many people interested [in] every apartment that comes up.”

To be fair, rental prices for New Yorkers have yet to return to levels seen at the start of the pandemic. According to data from StreetEasy, Manhattan median asking rent hit $3,000 last month for the first time since July 2020. But that’s still below a high of $3,500 seen in March 2020, before prices started to come down. In Brooklyn, median rent rose to $2,600 in July, a $100 jump since June and $100 difference from the March 2020 high of about $2,700. Median rent in Queens rose to $2,200 last month, inching closer to — but not quite matching — the high of $2,400 seen in March and April of last year.

On the other hand, rent discounts — once a pandemic staple — are falling. In Manhattan, rent cuts hit their lowest level in a decade in July, falling nearly 25 percent year-over-year to 9.5 percent, according to StreetEasy. Rent cuts dropped 15.3 percent in Brooklyn and 11.7 percent in Queens last month compared to a year ago.
Typical market

Some New Yorkers who anticipated this frenzied market tried to get ahead of the crowds and returned to the city earlier.

But that has also meant these renters are back in the city as the delta variant takes hold and more companies delay their return-to-work dates.

Big return

The renters who are returning now are facing a market with far more demand and less supply. According to StreetEasy, inventory levels in Midtown, the Financial District, East Village, Battery Park, Chelsea, Greenpoint and Downtown Brooklyn in July were below what they were during the same time in 2019.

We are seeing that rates for rental inventory dropping this summer is a bit faster than it was two years ago, the last time when we had seasonality comparisons for July,” said Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy and Zillow. “Right now, not only are we getting seasonal effects but we’re also getting the effects of people moving back to the city all at once.”

Gani — who rents in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, SoHo, Nolita, Tribeca, Upper East Side and Hell’s Kitchen — has seen the imbalanced supply and demand pool while showing units to clients this summer.

“Last year, we had, let’s say, 500 apartments but only 50 people looking. This year, we have 500 people looking and only 50 apartments,” he said. “There’s a surge of people coming back into the city, but there’s not a lot of inventory.”

Ignoring delta

Even the recent rise in cases caused by the delta variant has not stopped Gani from receiving a flood of emails, texts, calls and StreetEasy messages. Earlier this month, the broker said he received 99 inquiries via StreetEasy within the first day of listing a two-bedroom apartment on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side renting for $3,500.

Becki Danchik, a real estate broker for Warburg Realty, who represents clients in Manhattan, is seeing similar trends. Earlier this summer, Danchik said she received 300 inquiries across seven apartment listings in less than one day.

“Between last year and now, the rental market has gone from zero to 100,” she said. “It takes me like hours to just respond to people.”

Wu noted downtown neighborhoods that young people are eager to return to are the most in demand.

“We are seeing that the inventory numbers in East Village, in a lot of areas of downtown Manhattan, are dropping way faster than they are in Upper East Side, or even areas in Brooklyn, where we’re seeing generally less demand from the younger, more mobile renters,” Wu said.

But as neighborhoods with fewer young people remain less desirable, Wu recommended that aspiring tenants broaden their search, like Perillo did.

“It’s a very hard time for the market,” she said. “But it’s definitely a possibility to research and see other neighborhoods and consider the tradeoffs there.”

New York City Rents Rise, Even as Thousands Struggle to Pay

One report found that rents in the city were now the highest in the nation, surpassing San Francisco. At the same time, tens of thousands of people are millions of dollars behind on rent.

On her first day in office this week, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that she would move to strengthen New York’s beleaguered effort to distribute pandemic rent relief, highlighting the plight of hundreds of thousands of struggling New Yorkers who are at risk of being evicted.

On the same day, one apartment rental site, Zumper, published a report that showcased a very different trend: After a market rebound, New York City had surpassed San Francisco and claimed the inglorious post of the most expensive place to rent a one-bedroom apartment in the nation. Data from July from the listing site Zillow, while still showing San Francisco as the more expensive place to rent, showed that New York City had closed a gap between the two cities since March 2020 and was only about 4 percent behind.

That both story lines could be true at the same time — surging rents and continuing, widespread economic pain — was yet another reminder of New York City’s longstanding issues with inequality and a striking reflection of how the recovery from the pandemic has, in some ways, been uneven.
The rent increases have been driven in part by the return of people to more expensive neighborhoods in New York City, and specifically Manhattan, where rents had dropped during the pandemic, analysts said. The desperate need for rent relief, however, is most acute among lower income New Yorkers in parts of the South Bronx or Queens.

“It really is a tale of two cities when it comes to New York City — when we talk about rent rising rapidly, we’re really talking about some of the most expensive areas like Manhattan,” said Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy, which is owned by Zillow.

Hochul moves to change the rent relief program

The pandemic dealt a significant blow to renters in New York.

An analysis of census data from late June and early July by the National Equity Atlas, a research group associated with the University of Southern California, estimated that more than 830,000 households in New York State, the majority in New York City, were behind on rent, with a total estimated debt of more than $3.2 billion. Almost half of the renters in those households were unemployed and more than three-quarters earned less than $50,000 a year, according to the analysis.

But the rollout of New York’s rent relief effort — which is designed to deliver payments directly to landlords and provide broad protections against evictions for tenants, even as their applications are pending — has been slow and riddled with errors. And there are fears that many people who need help have yet to apply.
As of Wednesday, 176,000 people had applied to the program, with the largest numbers of applications in New York City coming from ZIP codes in the Bronx, according to state data. On Tuesday, state officials said more than $200 million in payments had been made — less than 8 percent of the $2.7 billion allocated for relief by the state.

In one of her first acts as governor, Ms. Hochul said the state was conducting a “rapid review” of the program’s work flow, and reassigning 100 contractors to help landlords complete the paperwork required for payments to be disbursed.

She also said the state would spend an additional $1 million on outreach, specifically focusing on areas where the state was not receiving as many applications as expected.
“We want to reimburse the landlords, make people whole,” she said on MSNBC on Wednesday. “People don’t know about this, so I’m going to be working at the local level to get the message out.”

Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, who chairs the social committee and held a hearing earlier this month on the rent relief program, said she was “very, very happy” with Ms. Hochul’s urgent moves on rent relief.

“There are a million issues she could have picked,” Ms. Rosenthal said.
Median rents are on the rise

Zumper used data from more than one million active rental listings — from other rental listing services as well as through the company’s own platform — to calculate the asking median one-bedroom rent in New York City and San Francisco, both infamously expensive cities.

In March 2020, that figure in San Francisco was $3,500, compared with $2,850 in New York City, according to Zumper. After the pandemic hit, and many people with means to relocate and ability to work remotely left their homes in the cities, rents dropped. By January 2021, the median rent in San Francisco had fallen 23.4 percent to $2,680, and the median rent in New York City had fallen 17.5 percent to $2,350.

Then as the vaccines became more available, and cities started relaxing their pandemic restrictions, people began returning to the cities, and rents began rising again, though they were rising much faster in New York City, said Jeff Andrews, the author of the Zumper report.

By August, the median rent for a one-bedroom in New York City was $2,810, about 1.4 percent below the March 2020 number. The median rent in San Francisco was $2,800 — still 20 percent below the March 2020 number.

Mr. Andrews said part of the difference in trajectories could be explained by the high number of tech workers who lived in San Francisco before the pandemic, who may not have returned to the city because they have a greater ability to work remotely.

He said that even though the median one-bedroom rent in San Francisco is 20 percent below the March 2020 number, it is still only $10 less than New York City’s median rent — showing how staggeringly high rents in San Francisco were in the first place, which may be dissuading people from returning entirely.

“It speaks to how outlandishly expensive San Francisco has been,” he said.

There are several caveats to the idea that New York City has grown more expensive than San Francisco overall. Zumper’s most recent data showed that the median asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco was $3,830, significantly higher than the $3,000 in New York City.

Mark A. Willis, a senior policy fellow at New York University’s Furman Center, said that the data may be skewed because it represents only rental units that are on the market, and not all units, including those that are currently unavailable but where people are living and paying rent, for example.

And the Zillow numbers show a slight difference. The Zillow Observed Rent Index, a special measure that takes into account what is available on the market, was $2,752 for an apartment in New York City in July, compared with $2,875 in San Francisco.

But Ms. Wu said both Zumper and Zillow appeared to be showing a similar overall trend.

“According to Zillow data, New York City rents are growing faster month over month than San Francisco,” she said.

Both data from Zumper and Zillow show that the changes in rent differ across boroughs. In Manhattan, the median one-bedroom rent dropped by about 19 percent from March 2020 to January 2021, compared with 10 percent in Queens, 5 percent in Brooklyn and 4 percent in the Bronx, according to the Zumper data.

And by August, the Manhattan and Brooklyn rents had recovered or even increased slightly compared with March 2020, with the Bronx slightly down and Queens still more than 6 percent below March 2020 levels.

Watch This Video If You’re About to Buy or Rent in NYC

How do you qualify for rent in NYC?

Minimum income to rent a NYC apartment

Most landlords will require that your annual income (OR the combined annual income of you and your roommates) equals at least 40-45 times the monthly rent. For example, to rent a $3,000 per month apartment, your annual income will need to be around $120,000.

Do I need a license to rent my house in NY?

Landlord are not required to have a rental license in New York. However, we do advise that you check your local jurisdiction for rental license laws and be aware that, if required, they typically need to be renewed annually.

How do you find houses for rent?

How to find rental houses near you

Ask friends, neighbors, and family members. …
Check RentMLS.com. …
Use a rental listing sites. …
Hire a real estate agent. …
Browse your local newspaper. …
Drive through the desired neighborhood. …
Use social media. …
Try Craigslist.

Is it hard to rent in NYC?

Unless you have connections in the city, the barrier to entry is high.” Even for renters accustomed to complex housing markets, finding an apartment in New York can be daunting. Many first-time renters arrive in the city braced for small, expensive apartments, but few are prepared for just how small and expensive.

Do you have to make 40x your rent in New York?

In certain cities (especially New York), property management companies require you to have an annual salary of 40 times the rent in order to be approved as a new tenant. … In fact, a 2017 StreetEasy study found that the majority of New Yorkers’ incomes don’t meet this threshold.

How do you ask for a lower rent price?

Here are some ways you can go about negotiating your rent price:

Ask the landlord if rent price is open to discussion. …
Highlight your strengths as a tenant. …
Inquire about extending the lease. …
Offer to end the lease in the summer. …
Research the property’s value. …
Be open to compromise. …
Negotiate directly, follow up in writing.

How long can you go without paying rent in NYC?

fourteen days
States set specific rules and procedures for ending a tenancy when a tenant has not paid the rent. New York landlords must give tenants at least fourteen days in which to pay the rent or move. If the tenant does neither, the landlord can file for eviction.

What is the new rent law in New York?

Yes — under new rent laws in New York, landlords need to give tenants 30 days notice if they plan to raise the rent by 5% or more. With the passing of new rent legislation, tenants in rent-regulated apartments will be largely protected from substantial rent increases.

What is the best house rental website?

The 6 Best Rental Listing Sites of 2021

Best Overall: Zillow Rental Manager.
Best for Screening Prospective Tenants: Avail.
Best for Attracting Qualified Applicants: Apartments.com.
Easiest for Landlords to Use: Cozy.
Best Listing Site for Filling Vacancies Fast: Zumper.
Best for Cost Comparables: Rentometer.

What upfront costs will you probably face when renting?

Most landlords will require about one month’s rent upfront, which is usually refundable, as long as you do not damage the property and pay your rent on time and in full. Pet deposit or fee.

Is it hard to rent apartment in New York?

Renting an apartment in New York is no easy task. Going at it alone often means running into numerous dead ends and uninviting spaces you’d never realistically consider. … We’ve found that the best way to find an apartment in New York is with the assistance of an experienced real estate agent.

What does 40x the rent mean?

Some people use the 40x rule since many landlords require that your annual gross income be at least 40 times your monthly rent. To calculate, simply divide your annual gross income by 40. … If you make $90,000 a year, you can spend $27,000 on rent, and so your monthly rent should be $2,250.

How much rent can I afford on 50k a year?

How much rent can I afford on a $50,000 salary? On $50,000 a year, you’re making $4,167 gross per month. Taking 30 percent of that, you may be able to afford up to $1,250 per month in rent.

Can I rent in NYC without a job?

The good news is – while it might be more difficult – you can get an apartment in NYC without a job. To help those without a job looking for an apartment in NYC, Roomi has laid out some possible avenues.

How can I get an apartment with no income in NYC?

HUD helps apartment owners offer reduced rents to low-income tenants. To apply, contact or visit the management office of each apartment building that interests you. There are also several subsidized rental programs administered by New York State and New York City listed below.