With listings at their lowest September level since 2019, renters are now asked to bring two forms of ID, three references and a short essay on why they deserve a closet.
MURRAY HILL, United States (Spintaxi) – The median rent in Manhattan has climbed to a record $5,395 a month, and the borough’s apartments, sensing for the first time that they hold all the power, have begun conducting the interviews themselves.
The figure comes from the Corcoran Group’s monthly report, which 6sqft summarized under a headline about the new record: median rent up 2 percent from August and 9 percent from a year earlier, average rent at a record $6,865, and just 5,015 active listings, the lowest September count since 2019. The vacancy rate stood at 1.54 percent.
A Rental Market Defined by Missing Apartments
“Manhattan’s rental market remains defined by a lack of available apartments,” said Gary Malin, Corcoran’s chief operating officer, adding that “competition remains frustratingly intense across much of the borough.” Renters agreed with both statements and asked whether they could sublet the word “frustratingly,” since it was the only thing in the report with room to spare.
A second set of numbers, from The Real Deal’s rental report as broken down by Brick Underground, put Manhattan’s September median at $4,900, the second-highest on record, with listings down 22.7 percent for the 15th straight month and the luxury median up 18.1 percent to $16,591. Brokers say the $495 gap between the two medians has already been listed as a junior one-bedroom with “great light, no bedroom.”
The Real Deal’s figures also showed apartments spending an average of just 20 days on the market, down from 39. “Twenty days is not a market, it is a shift change,” said Vivian Castellano, a rental broker in Kips Bay for 22 years. “I listed a studio on Monday. By Wednesday there were 41 applicants, by Thursday the studio had chosen a finalist, and by Friday it had ghosted him.”
Inside a Murray Hill Open House
On a recent Saturday, a line of roughly 60 renters stretched from a walk-up on East 34th Street around the corner to the bodega, where the owner had begun charging a small fee to stand near the ATM. Inside, prospective tenants were handed a printed listing, reproduced here in full:
SUN-KISSED JR1, MURRAY HILL. $5,395/mo. Steps to everything, because the unit is one step wide. Windowed kitchen (window is in the bathroom, kitchen is near it). Exposed brick, exposed pipes, exposed neighbor. Heat included in summer. Applicants must earn 40 times the rent, provide a letter from a previous landlord saying they were “quiet, but not in a weird way,” and submit a 300-word statement on what they would bring to the apartment. The apartment reserves the right to not call you back.
Kayla Mendez, a 29-year-old paralegal who has toured 34 apartments since Labor Day, said the statement was the hardest part. “I wrote that I would bring loyalty, a reliable work ethic and a dehumidifier,” she said. “The super told me the apartment liked me but was looking for someone more established. It went with a hedge fund guy’s dog.”
Listings, brokers say, have grown so demanding that they read less like real estate and more like a farm’s want ad seeking a wife, with the key difference that the farm at least offers a porch.
Brooklyn Bidding Wars and the Queens Spillover
Brooklyn offers no escape. Corcoran put the borough’s median at $4,300, up 5 percent from a year ago, and The Real Deal reported that 32.7 percent of new Brooklyn leases involved a bidding war, roughly one in three. Local tenants’ groups say the other two in three were settled by a staring contest in the hallway.
“A bidding war on a Bushwick apartment is the only war where everyone loses and the radiator wins,” said Ravi Chandrasekhar, a comic who performs in the back room of a Kips Bay Irish bar. “I bid $200 over asking. A couple bid $400 over. Then a guy walked in and offered to pay the landlord’s car insurance. He got the unit. I got a free tote bag.”
Queens, where The Real Deal’s survey of Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside found a median of $3,742, has become the borough of choice for renters who have accepted their fate but not yet their commute. “People in Astoria used to say ‘it’s only one stop from Manhattan,’” said Bridget Kowalczyk, who does stand-up at a bar on 30th Avenue. “Now they say ‘it’s only one stop from my old salary.’”
Many renters now sign leases sight unseen, a practice brokers compare to Wyoming ranchers who buy the cows first and figure out the land later. “You commit to the rent, and then you discover the apartment,” said Castellano. “Sometimes it’s a lovely surprise. Sometimes it is a hallway with a sink.”
A Survey of Renters Finds Optimism in Short Supply
A study of 400 Manhattan renters by the Midtown Institute for Housing Despair found that 63 percent now consider “has a door” a luxury amenity, 27 percent have applied for apartments they could not physically fit inside, and 11 percent said they would accept a unit located entirely within a radiator if it were rent stabilized.
The city’s roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments remain under a two-year freeze approved by the Rent Guidelines Board, which brokers say explains why no one has moved out of one since the late 1990s. “Stabilized tenants don’t leave,” said Castellano. “They are handed down, like a grandfather clock. I have seen a lease passed down in a will, ahead of the jewelry.”
Tips for Renters in a Record Market
Experts advise renters to have every document ready before a viewing, to bring a certified check, to look up the building’s complaint history and to avoid falling in love with a unit before the landlord has fallen in love with their credit report. Renters who need to laugh about any of it can find the city’s housing misery covered regularly at bohiney.com, the home of Bohiney Magazine.
Back in Murray Hill, the line outside the walk-up had thinned by sundown. At press time, the borough’s vacancy rate stood at 1.54 percent, and the 0.54 had already received four applications, two counteroffers and a request for a second showing from a couple who said they would be fine without the 0.04.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
I lost a one-bedroom in Murray Hill last week because the apartment felt my essay on deserving a closet lacked a clear thesis. The vacancy rate is 1.54 percent, which is roughly the share of my income I get to keep after rent. Asking to sublet the word “frustratingly” is the most realistic housing plan anyone in this city has proposed in a decade.