NYC rents shift into reverse

Manhattan rents dipped for the second straight month in October, signaling that rampant rent growth is a thing of the past. 

The borough’s median rent landed at $4,195 last month, a 3.6 percent drop from September and a mere 4.6 percent increase from the same month last year, according to a report by appraisal firm Miller Samuel for Douglas Elliman.

The annualized uptick is the lowest reported since September 2021 and pales in comparison to the 20 to 30 percent increases clocked through much of 2022. 

 The city’s rental market peaked in August, according to the report. 

Tenants skipped the apartment search in favor of lease renewals, the report found, as new Manhattan lease signings fell annually for the fourth consecutive month.

In Brooklyn and northwest Queens, where apartments typically rent for less, the price declines were more acute: Brooklyn’s median rent settled at $3,490 in October, a 5.7 percent decline from September and a 0.2 percent drop from the same month last in 2022. October marked the first time in two years that Brooklyn rents did not increase year-over-year. 

In Queens, the median rent last month was $3,198, an 18-percent decline from August’s peak price.

The citywide slowdown mirrors the national trend.

Jay Parsons, RealPage Analytics’ chief economist, posted this week on X, formerly Twitter, that September marked the 18th straight month that annual rent growth had slowed. October’s annualized increase of 0.1 percent matched the uptick in September. 

“So it looks like a plateau, and that might stick through the winter,” Parsons wrote. “We’ll see.”

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