A year into the COVID-19 pandemic and New York City landlords are beginning to secure new leases, as decreased prices appear to be enticing tenants to return to the city or hold on to current residents, according to Forbes reporter Noah Kirsch. A new report by Douglas Elliman Real Estate found the median rental price fell at least 11% during February. Plus, in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, the number of leases signed last month beat the record set in 2012 during the comeback from the global financial crisis.
The news comes as New York City slowly begins to reopen. Restaurants will soon be able to operate at 50% capacity and movie theaters are once again beginning to show films. It’s been a brutal year for the city; the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 11.4% in December, a 7.8% increase over December 2019.
Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers fled the city at the onset of the pandemic, to ritzy enclaves upstate, quiet towns in the Northeast and other pockets of the country. The coming months will help reveal how many intend to return, and whether rental prices will subsequently increase.
In light of the revived demand, some owners are temporarily keeping units off the market in the hopes of a sustained rebound that may help them get higher rates sooner than expected. According to UrbanDigs, a real estate insights firm, in Manhattan landlords took more than 1,800 apartments off the market in February, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week. For their part, renters are enjoying the reprieve from record prices, which peaked just before the pandemic.
Read More
