NEW YORK – For anyone looking for a pandemic discount on a new apartment in the city, the window may have closed on many of those opportunities, according to a new report.
At the height of the COVID rise in New York City, thousands of Manhattanites had left the city in favor of the extra room that comes with a home (or at the very least, a larger apartment). According to a report by apartmentguide.com, rents for some apartments dropped by about a third during 2020.
By the time August 2020 rolled around, the situation had only gotten worse, and at the lowest point in February 2021, prices for an average one-bedroom apartment in the city were just above $ 2,900. That is even worse than from August to September. 2020 prices, when one-bedroom rents averaged around $ 3,100, according to the report.
With the return of more pleasant temperatures, and the distribution of the COVID vaccine advancing, prices began to rise again, according to the report. Instead of dropping a third, rates fell just 10 percent at the beginning of the summer. By late summer, with many things reopening once again, rental prices had risen eight percent year-over-year, Apartment Guide said in its report.
Any losses from the pandemic disappeared between August 2020 and August 2021, as prices for one-bedroom apartments jumped 36 percent during that time. Nationally, those same jumps were just under 9 percent, showing how much New York prices were rising compared to the rest of the United States.
While one-bedroom apartments proved to be the most volatile when it comes to price, two-bedroom apartments were more stable, according to the report, but they also had their ups and downs. Those units saw their biggest drop in February 2021, when they fell nearly 18 percent year-over-year.
Prices for two-bedroom units bottomed out around $ 4,900 first in August-September 2020, and after a brief rally, it returned to those levels during the first few months of 2021, according to the Apartment Guide report.
But once again, the end of the summer pushed levels to a new peak for two-bedroom units, having risen nearly five times that of the rest of the country. Like their one-bedroom counterparts, prices for two-bedroom apartments in New York peaked in August 2021, rising more than 35 percent from 2020, and continuing to rise.
But for those seeking rent relief, there may be some hope, according to the report. Over the course of the latter part of the summer (July through August), the median price of one- and two-bedroom units fell more than two percent and nearly five percent, respectively. That could be due to overcorrection, but it’s still too early to tell.
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