These small-town blues, they are melting away. I’ll make a brand new start of it in old New York — but will I be able to pay?
Record-high New York City rents, following a pandemic-era plunge into record lows, continue to hit all-time, and bank-busting, highs — and July was no different.
That’s according to the latest rental market report from Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel — a monthly release tracking pricing in Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens — which found that median and average rents in Manhattan climbed to a respective $4,150 and $5,113 per month.
Those figures surpass already-historic highs. The June rental report, released last month, found that the average rental price in Manhattan broke the $5,000 threshold for the first time ever. In May, the median rent price reached $4,000 for the first time.
(Median rent, largely known as a more reliable way of tracking prices, is the mid-point value of total price samples. The average is the sum of all rents divided by the number of samples.)
As for the reasons why prices continue their push into sky-high — and largely unaffordable — territory, they haven’t changed. Late last year, when locals returned to the city from their pandemic getaways with schools — and much later, offices — reopening, the rental market became crowded. (Around that time, New Yorkers who took advantage of lower COVID-era rents faced massive increases in their monthly dues upon renewal.)
They’ve since been joined by out-of-town remote workers who continue moving to New York thanks to ongoing locational flexibility. Thanks to inflation, they also now compete with would-be home buyers who have turned to the rental market for the time being due to higher mortgage rates.
The Elliman and Miller Samuel report comes just weeks after a StreetEasy market report found the inventory for city rental homes rose 14% to nearly 66,000 units in the second quarter from the first — with priced-out tenants likely accounting for at least a third of that sum. That equals at least 22,337 homes whose residents couldn’t keep up with payments.
Adding salt to the wound, many landlords require lease applicants to earn an annual salary equal to some 40 times their monthly rent, otherwise known as the “40 times rent rule.” For the July Manhattan median, that would equal a salary of $166,000; for the Manhattan average, that’s $204,520.
Manhattan’s $4,150 Elliman and Miller Samuel-recorded median marks a 2.5% month-over-month climb from the $4,050 recorded in June. The $5,113 average is 1.1% above the $5,058 tallied in June.
Year-over-year, the jumps are more staggering. The $4,150 Manhattan median is 29.4% above the $3,208 July 2021 median. Meanwhile, the $5,113 average marks a 27.5% increase from last July’s $4,009.
Brooklyn and Northwest Queens, the latter of which is home to the prime Astoria neighborhood, also notched increases.
Brooklyn’s median July rent hit $3,400 — a 3% month-over-month jump from $3,300 and an 18.3% spike from last July’s $2,875. Brooklyn’s average rent, meanwhile, hit $3,883 in July — up 1.6% month-over-month from $3,822 and 16.8% year-over-year from $3,324.
Northwest Queens saw a median rent of $3,146, a 4.8% increase from $3,002 the previous month and 10.4% above last July’s $2,850. The $3,426 average marked a 2.2% change from June’s $3,352 average and an 11.5% boost from last July’s $3,073.
The report does not tally The Bronx or Staten Island.
