Finding the rare gem in New York, a challenge for rental applicants
Renting a house in New York has always been a combat sport. But since the end of the pandemic, it has been a near-impossible mission for many tenants in the face of unprecedented price increases.
In the spring, when the leases were renegotiated, Paula Sevilla, a young Spanish woman, and her roommates were charged an increase of $ 800 a month to stay in their shared flat. Brooklynthe largest and most fashionable of New York’s five boroughs.
They then begin a frantic search for a new home: after two months of visits – often windowless accommodation, bordering on unsanitary hygienic conditions, long queues and increasingly demanding practices, they are selected for a three-room apartment at $ 3,000 a month.
” We happened to lose an apartment por after applying … four minutes late“, The 26-year-old Spaniard, a New Yorker by adoption, tells AFP.
In a purchasing market almost inaccessible to the middle classes, finding the rare pearl to rent has always been a challenge in this mythical city, a global economic and cultural magnet but with evident socio-economic inequalities.
Landlords asking for a salary of 40 times the rent
After a small hiatus in 2021, at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic that had brought the megalopolis to its knees and forced tens of thousands of families to flee, rental prices jumped in one year by 20.4% in the second quarter of this year, according to the real estate site StreetEasy.
The owners – sometimes investment funds hidden behind real estate agents and others ” broker “they require an annual salary of 40 times the monthly rent, no debt, near-perfect bank statements and tax forms.
Paula Sevilla earns $ 75,000 a year, slightly above the average New York salary. But not enough to rent alone. Tenants also sometimes have to pay agents commissions, which represent a month’s rent or even 15% of the annual cost.
We must add an inflationary economic environment, poor construction quality of buildings in terms of thermal and sound insulation, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, and a chronic shortage of new homes in an 8.5 million-strong megacity. . According to the Washington Up For Growth research center, there were 340,000 missing in the entire New York conurbation in 2019.
“Stabilized” but not blocked fees
There are ” too many customers and not enough apartments“It simply sums up Miguel Urbina, a real estate agent.
The municipality of New York, a city that leans to the left, has imposed rents ” stabilized for one million housing units and two million tenants.
But the prices, which depend on a vote of the city council with a democratic majority, are not blocked.
Under the far-left mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), he rents ” stabilized »Increased by only 1.5% in one year. Under his successor to the right of the Democratic Party, former African-American cop Eric Adams, prices have been skyrocketing for at least ten years (from + 3.5% to + 5% in June over a year).
55% of the income spent on housing in Manhattan, 60% in Brooklyn
In Manhattan, a family dedicates 55% of their income to housing. The rate reaches 60% in Brooklyn and 43% in popular Queens, according to StreetEasy data which denounces ” a huge financial burden“.
The island of Manhattan, the financial heart of the United States, offers small apartments for an average of $ 5,000 per month, real estate agent Gea Elika explains to AFP. There are also giant terraced duplexes around Central Park on famous 5th Avenue offered for … $ 140,000 a month.
Enough to push the middle classes and younger generations to more disadvantaged neighborhoods where African American, Hispanic and Asian communities live, fueling gentrification.
And the prospect is bleak: the ” horizon of Manhattan, which changes almost visibly, concentrates the construction of office skyscrapers and luxury apartments. And despite construction sites in Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey across the Hudson River, no one expects prices to slow down.
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