A one-bedroom with a view for rent at $4,652 a month.
A rental report from December confirmed a trend we’ve been seeing for a few months — rents on the Upper West Side appear to be leveling off. Rents for most kinds of apartments were flat or even slightly down in December 2014 when compared with December 2013. Compare that to the 10% year-over-year jumps a few years ago. A report from Douglas Elliman shows similar figures, with rents on the West side (including areas below the UWS) rising 0.4% year-over-year.
To be sure, this doesn’t mean market-rate rents are cheap or even semi-affordable to your average Upper West Side family. If rents are flattening, they’re leveling off at 30,000 feet — this is your captain speaking we’ll be up here for awhile, so grab a drink and hold tight — but they do seem to have lost some of their upward momentum. Here are the stats from MNS:
December 2014
- Studio (with doorman) $2,659
- Studio (no doorman) $2,161
- One-bedroom (with doorman) $3,726
- One-bedroom (no doorman) $2,743
- Two-bedroom (with doorman) $5,926
- Two bedroom (no doorman) $3,816
December 2013
- Studio (with doorman) $2,702
- Studio (no doorman) $2,087
- One-bedroom (with doorman) $3,723
- One-bedroom (no doorman) $2,683
- Two-bedroom (with doorman) $6,036
- Two bedroom (no doorman) $3,953
Note: MNS says it looks at more than 10,000 listings priced under $10,000 to compile its reports. The report is compiled by its marketing department.
I think it is more of a stall of the plane before it swoops downwards. There is no way rent prices (and real estate prices) can be sustained with that rapid of a growth without an “adjustment”.
> rents on the Upper West Side appear to be leveling off
Please let it be so. My market-rate rent costs me nearly an entire paycheck, and something has to give eventually.