Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

NYC Rents Are Still High, But Price Growth Slows to a Crawl, Report Finds

By Amy Zimmer | October 24, 2017 9:13am
 Some areas like North Brooklyn, Ridgewood and Corona already saw rents dips, StreetEasy found. Though the Upper East Side (pictured above) had Manhattan's biggest price gains.
Some areas like North Brooklyn, Ridgewood and Corona already saw rents dips, StreetEasy found. Though the Upper East Side (pictured above) had Manhattan's biggest price gains.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Shaye Weaver

MANHATTAN —There’s some good and bad news for renters.

Bad news: Rents reached all-time highs in the third quarter of 2017, according to a report released Tuesday from StreetEasy focusing on Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Good news: Price growth is finally slowing down to a crawl, researchers at the real estate search engine found.

Prices have fallen in a couple of areas and soon they might dip across the city, said the report's author and StreetEasy senior economist Grant Long.

“If current patterns continue, rents across the board will likely fall as new units coming onto the market are forced to compete with leftover summer inventory during one of the slowest times of the year,” Long said.

Brooklyn rents barely budged from the same time a year ago, edging up a mere 0.6 percent to $2,460 a month for the borough’s median. Last year, for instance, rents were up 1.6 percent from the year before, which was three times faster than this year’s anemic pace, StreetEasy found.

Queens and Manhattan hardly saw any growth either, each inching up 0.7 percent. The median rent was $1,991 a month in Queens and $2,989 a month in Manhattan.

“While rents remain high, they’re growing at a snail’s pace. Part of this can be attributed to the onslaught of new construction driving up competition among landlords, but ultimately there is a limit to what renters are willing to pay,” Long said.

“After years of growth, rents in the city may have reached the peak of what New Yorkers can afford," Long added.

High-end rentals in Brooklyn and Queens in particular were seeing prices stagnating or even dropping, Long said.

North Brooklyn — which includes the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint — was the borough’s only area to see rents decline, dropping 0.5 percent since last year to $3,067 a month.

This area was also No. 1 when it came to price cuts: nearly a third of rental listings saw discounts from the original asking price.

More than a quarter of all rentals in the Queens neighborhoods of Ridgewood, Corona and Clearview offered discounts, StreetEasy found.

In Manhattan, rents grew slowest in its least expensive market of Upper Manhattan, rising just 0.6 percent since a year ago to $2,202 a month, marking the first time in six years that the area did not outpace the rest of the borough in rent growth.

There were a handful of areas that bucked the slow-down trend.

Rents grew fastest on the Upper East Side, rising 1.6 percent from a year ago to $2,644, the report noted.

In Kings County, rents grew fastest in South Brooklyn — which includes areas from Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Kensington to Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. The median was 2.9 percent higher compared to the same time a year ago, reaching $1,794 a month.

Rents were up 3 percent in the northeast section of Queens, which includes areas such as Flushing, Kew Gardens and Bayside. The median rent in this area hit $1,910 a month.