In New York, occupying an apartment without having to share it with roommates remains an authentic marker of social success. Exceptionally, during the pandemic, many not particularly wealthy New York tenants were able to taste the pleasures of living alone because for eighteen months the mass exodus of residents had suddenly caused rents to drop by more than 20% on average. . But housing deals are over in the Big Apple, announces The New York Times :
“Compared to January 2021, rents have increased by 33% on average and it is not uncommon for the renewal of the lease to be conditional on the doubling of the rent.”
Unsurprisingly, it is in the most popular neighborhoods that the rise in prices is the most spectacular. At the height of the pandemic, in Williamsburg as in Brooklyn or on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, rents increased by around 40%. In SoHo, the median rent jumped 58% in the fourth quarter of 2021 according to the real estate site StreetEasy: from 3,800 dollars (3,500 euros) to 6,002 dollars (5,526 euros).
Sentenced to roommate
Before the pandemic, a studio in Manhattan’s Financial District was listed on StreetEasy for $2,614 (2,407 euros) per month. In January 2021, the rent fell to 1,750 dollars (1,610 euros). But on April 1, it suddenly rose to 3,450 dollars (3,175 euros), a little less than double.
Such increases point to a crisis in the rental market due in part to the return of “Covid expatriates again attracted by a revitalized city” – or just back to the office. In February 2021, the housing vacancy rate in Manhattan was 11.8%; a year later, it was only 1.3%.
The only consolation: rents for shared accommodation, which during the pandemic fell to their lowest level in six years, have not risen as sharply as those for individual accommodation in recent months. The median rent paid by New York roommates thus stood at 1,199 dollars (1,103 euros) last February, or nearly 100 dollars less than before the start of the pandemic.