Real Estate
Brownsville Rental Searches Surge As Tenants Skip Manhattan: Study
Check out the top affordable neighborhoods across New York City with the most interest on StreetEasy.
NEW YORK CITY — Renters are skipping over searching for apartments in pricey Manhattan in favor of cheaper digs in places such as Brownsville, according to a new study.
Apartment searches in Brownsville jumped 45 percent in July over the same point last, a StreetEasy study released Monday found.
Other neighborhoods in south and east Brooklyn and central Queens saw similar spikes in interest, which the StreetEasy study tied to pandemic-era discounts ending in Manhattan, where about 44 percent of tenants have been priced out of their apartments.
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"Among the top 10 neighborhoods with the strongest year-over-year increases in search volume in July, five were in Brooklyn and four were in Queens, but only one neighborhood – East Harlem – was in Manhattan," the study states.
The average rent in Manhattan stood at $5,113, according to another recent analysis by Douglas Elliman. StreetEasy found the typical, or median, rent in Manhattan that month was $4,200.
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The typical rent in six popular Manhattan neighborhoods — Chelsea, East Village, Greenwich Village, West Village, Lower East Side, and SoHo — all saw drops in number of apartment searches.
"The average median asking rent of these six neighborhoods was $4,852 in July, 15.5% above the borough’s median asking rent," the study states. "A tempering of rental search growth in Manhattan suggests hopeful renters are looking elsewhere in search of a more affordable unit."
By contrast, the typical rent in Brownsville stood at $2,197, or about 35 percent of Brooklyn median asking rent, according to StreetEasy.
The study argued that Manhattan's sky-high prices is forcing renters to search for apartments far away from that borough's business districts.
The most affordable neighborhoods with the highest year-over-year growth in StreetEasy searches were:
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