As luxury stays sluggish, lower-end rentals are getting pricier

Rents are up across the city — but especially in less pricey neighborhoods.

Between 2010 and 2018, the average rent increase citywide was 31 percent, the New York Times reported, citing a StreetEasy study. The smallest increases were in expensive Manhattan neighborhoods — including Central Park South and Midtown, where prices rose 16 percent.

Meanwhile, some Brooklyn areas saw jumps of 37 percent or more. Those neighborhoods included Ditmas Park, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Midwood, Flatbush and Brighton Beach. Inwood, in Manhattan, saw rents climb 39 percent.

“What characterizes a lot of neighborhoods that saw the largest increases is relatively easy access to the city and relative value for your money, especially in 2010,” Grant Long, a senior economist at StreetEasy, told the Times. “As rents rise, people start looking at the next neighborhood over, and then the next neighborhood over.”

As middle-class renters move farther north in Manhattan and farther south in Brooklyn, affordability in those areas is declining, the report said. That gentrification has made it more difficult for lower-income and working-class residents to stay there longer term.

High-end housing, on the other hand, has been sluggish. Price growth there has lagged as the market grapples with an oversupply of inventory. In July, the median rental price for luxury apartments dipped 3.5 percent versus a year earlier. [NYT] — Meenal Vamburkar