By Gus Saltonstall
There was some good new in the Upper West Side real estate world on Wednesday.
The UWS had one of the largest declines in asking rent during February of any neighborhood in Manhattan, according to StreetEasy’s — “Rental Inventory Declines in NYC for First Time Since October 2022.”
The median asking rent in the neighborhood in February 2024 was $4,295, which was a 4.1 percent drop from the same month last year. The decrease made it the fifth-largest year-over-year decline of any neighborhood in the borough during the period.
The drop in rent on the Upper West Side was reflective of a larger trend in Manhattan.
“While asking rents in other boroughs continue to rise, Manhattan’s median asking rent fell 1% year-over-year to $4,257 in February,” StreetEasy reporter Kenny Lee wrote. “Asking rents will continue to decline in Manhattan as landlords adjust prices to attract tenants — one of StreetEasy’s housing market predictions for 2024.”
As West Side Rag reported last month, not all Upper West Side buildings are seeing this decrease in rental prices. The new owners of 600 Columbus Avenue recently raised rents within the building between 8.5 to 60 percent, according to tenants and the landlord.
Specifically, StreetEasy explained that the drop in UWS and Manhattan rental prices last month is due to “slowing competition in asking rents and rising landlord concessions in the borough.”
The publication pointed to how the upfront costs of moving from rental to rental played a part in the drop in rents.
The typical upfront costs, which includes first-month’s rent in advance, a security deposit, a broker’s fee, and application fees, is up 29 percent from 2019, before the pandemic disrupted the market. Due to these high initial costs, many city residents are delaying their next move, which keeps vacancy levels low.
The rental vacancy rate in NYC fell to 1.4 percent in 2023, which was the lowest since 1968.
That tide is now turning slightly in Manhattan to offset the slowing demand of people looking for new homes, as nearly a fifth of the available rentals in the borough last month offered at least one month free of rent, which is up 13 percent from last year.
In other words, more landlords in Manhattan, including on the Upper West Side, are looking to make rental apartments more attractive to buyers again, as the housing market finally begins to come back down from the pandemic boom.
You can check out the full study for yourself — HERE.
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This isn’t a surprise on the UWS, where a lot of folks left during and since the pandemic. The problem is that folks who invest here are still being asked to pay the same increasing taxes. It isn’t sustainable.
Would you look at that… in light of the recent discussion, sounds like the “morals” of the landlords are now, magically, fine?
You still need an income of $160K+ even to be eligible to rent the median apartment on the UWS.
As Columbia is allowed to build and convert more housing for their students, staff, and faculty, the demand for apartments will go down as well as prices will go down.
That is correct and what people don’t realize. When the university builds a new building, it takes a chunk of people off the market and prices will drop.
How do you figure? They are purchasing buildings where non-affliliates used to live and converting them to dorms and staff housing. This reduces the supply for non-affilliates and drives up the comps since the students seem willing to pay significantly more in monthly rent and don’t mind multiple roommates. My rent went up 50%.
Can we be clear here? Over $4200 for a one bedroom apartment is NUTS.
Of course it is! But those are the facts.
I was forced to leave my beautiful 75th St apartment last year when the landlord raised my rent over a 2-year period from $2250 to $3450!! Unconscionable. Methinks rents have a long way to decrease before any middle class person can afford the UWS.
“to make rental apartments more attractive to buyers” lol
Asking rents are declining in Manhattan, but are rising or have increased in Queens and Brooklyn.
https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-rental-inventory-declines/
Much of the above reflects fact ton of new luxury and other housing has gone up in latter two areas, and more is in pipeline. There is new “luxury” or other construction the Bronx and areas of Staten Island as well.
Landlords in Manhattan were or are able to get high market rents only because demand was there. That metric has changed and continues to be shaped by new inventory in outer boroughs. That and perception that living in Brooklyn or Queens isn’t once socially “no man’s land” any longer.
For sort of rents many LLs were or are asking on UWS or other parts of Manhattan (market rate) people can find nicer, newer and modern amenity filled housing in Brooklyn or Queens.
The people living in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods and Queens that are gentrifying still prefer Manhattan south of 96th Street. Every gentrifier living north of 96th in Manhattan wants to live south of it. That was a big reason why the pre-war apartment market was actually pretty strong on the UWS during COVID. Sure prices fell and there were no fee apartments all over the place, but there are brokers on the UWS who show UWS landlords like Brusco and Keyah and Tauber who made the most amount of money during their time doing UWS rentals during COVID before the inventory dried up starting around September 2021.
I live in a pre-war Rudin building – 241 CPW. I adore it. Over the last two years, rental prices have SPIKED here – some increases as low as 11%, some up to 60%. Many dear friends have had to leave, including a couple next week who have lived here for 20 years and are in their late 80s. Their proposed increase was 40% We will be very sorry to leave, but increasingly less so as the building has turned over (& over, and over). When we moved in, almost everyone here seemed to have lived here for decades – many decades! – now it seems to be only the rent controlled or stabilized who can afford to stay. Capitalism rules! Rudin seems to be getting the money they’re asking for within a few months of apartments going back on the market, so from that perspective, why wouldn’t they increase the rents as they’ve been doing? It feels like price gouging for those of us living here, but it’s the free market at work. And to be fair, no “middle class” people have probably ever been able to live here.
This is how communities die – transient neighbors who stay for 3-5 years and move on when pricing becomes out of reach. Can’t imagine anyone deciding to stay in NYC long-term anymore. Those days are behind us.
Let’s not forget that at last part, if not much, of the problem is that the outrageously high rents are artificially created. According to at least two recent studies, there is actually a glut of available apartments in NYC, but landlords are refusing to rent them. If they actually put all of the available apartments “on the market” (as it were), rents would be reduced by an even greater amount. Among the apartments not being rented are those that were formally part of the AirBnB “system,” of which there are hundreds, possibly thousands sitting empty.
Just as much of current inflation (gas, food, etc.) is artificial (i.e., corporations keeping prices even though they don’t need to anymore, with the pandemic over), so, too, are the high rents we continue to se throughout NYC.
Landlords and their lobbyists have always blamed the high prices on rent regulations. And that might have been a factor at one time. But not anymore. The problem now is being created entirely by the landlords themselves.
This is pure economic nonsense.
I am about to leave my apartment of 15 years (private condo, landlord selling unit, so I have no protections). So, I’ve been in the apt hunting market since January looking for a 1-bedroom in a doorman, elevator building. Most 1-bedrooms I have looked at are lower floors and facing a building in a courtyard, so no light, and I’m still finding it impossible to find much under $5K. If you want a view, it kicks up to $5.5- 6K on up! Yes, 1 bedrooms, no Penthouses. If you go into a rental building where at least you can save the broker fee, then you need 40X the monthly rent to qualify. And if you do find an apartment for $4800 (right now that would be a steal!), and you dilly dally in signing a contract, the apartment is gone. The market is soft for sellers however because buyers are holding off because of high interest rates. If you have enough for the downpayment and committed to staying in one place for awhile, do your math. Even with 7% and hefty HOA, you can buy and have a lower monthly cost than renting. And keep in mind, the buyer doesn’t pay the broker fee. Right now it is 15% of a year’s rent in a private condo or co-op and that isn’t anything you can deduct on your taxes.
The UWS rental market is soft. Especially the pre war properties. An unspoken factor in this is that the Brusco Group which owned about 150 buildings on the UWS and dominated the UWS pre war apartment market split up their holdings between the five siblings. Most pre war landlords based their prices on whatever Brusco could get. Now Joe Brusco is MDJ Realty and has about 40 buildings and is based out of 159 West 75th Street, Nick Brusco closed his law office and has about 15 buildings with a separate management company REM residential managing it under contract, Christina Brusco has about 12 buildings and a separate management company AJ Clarke managing it under contract, while Paul and John Brusco manage what’s left of West Side Management Corp. Now that the Brusco sibilings operate independently of each other, there’s less incentive to keep UWS rental prices high as 150 UWS pre war buildings was a commanding share of the UWS market and EVERY brokerage and management company that does UWS or Hell’s Kitchen would look to Brusco to decide market rent for UWS.