More renters are bargain hunting in deep Brooklyn, Queens

New York City renters, fed up with record rents and empowered by work from home policies, are looking for bargains deep in Brooklyn and Queens.

The outer boroughs claimed nine out of the top 10 neighborhoods with the highest increase in search volume in July, according to a StreetEasy report on user search data. Lower Manhattan counted the five historically sough-after neighborhoods with the biggest yearly decreases in search volume: Greenwich Village, West Village, East Village, SoHo and Lower East.

Those looking to Queens to escape high rents are largely looking at Maspeth, which saw a 58 percent increase in interest year over year.

The neighborhood’s median rent is $2,400, 8 percent lower than the borough’s median. Maspeth, which sits northeast of the rising residential market in East Williamsburg, saw the greatest increase in search volume despite being more expensive than the other Queens neighborhoods that saw a jump in searches.

In Brooklyn, Brownsville saw the biggest jump in searches. The neighborhood, which has the highest concentration of public housing in the United States, had a July median rent of $2,197, or 35 percent lower than the borough median.

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Renters looking for bargains in Manhattan mostly turned their sites to Upper Manhattan. The East, West and Central Harlem neighborhoods accounted for three of the most searched for neighborhoods compared to last July, joined by Morningside Heights and Hamilton Heights. Rent in East Harlem, the cheapest of the five neighborhoods, was $2,750, or 35 percent below the borough median.

While areas in Lower Manhattan saw the biggest declines in searches, Lee said it’s too early to tell if rents will start to fall, despite hitting a median in July of $4,850.

“I think a lot of landlords are feeling confident they can fill vacancies and late summer tends to be more competitive for rental markets, ” he said. “It’s possible the asking rent in these areas might have gone too far, but given how competitive the market is … I think it remains to be seen when asking rents start to decline on a month over month basis.”