you can filter by neighborhoods, bedrooms, original source where the rentals were posted, and select a timeframe.
this is still a work in progress, so apologies in advance for any issues you encounter. I would love any feedback on how to improve it and/or what other visualizations i should add. known issues include:
- some neighborhoods like Prospect Park will also automatically select other, unrelated, neighborhoods when selected
- sometimes even when you filter by 1BR it will also include some 2BR
- some units might have been listed on multiple platforms, effectively counting as duplicates
For example- my current apartment had a crazy high lease concession. The paper rent is 30% higher than what I pay. The only inconvenience is that i had to pay a security deposit at the paper rent, not actual rent. It’s like a software business giving 2 months free then multiplying MRR by 12, not taking churn into account. I am moving out after a year.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/825-E-Washington-St-Louis...
this is an example of a price cut https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1435-Mellwood-Ave-Louisvi...
Although both listings display full price history, there’s a key difference in how the information is presented. For the Mellwood Avenue example, a “Price cut: $16K (8/1)” notice appears directly above the listed price, making it immediately visible to users. In contrast, the East Washington listing does not show any price reduction at the top. Instead, users must scroll down to the Price History section to find that detail, easy enough to do but it is an attempt by realtors to obscure the market.
Also when the listing is removed and added, it resets the Days on Market count. This can obscure how long the property has truly been listed, which is a critical indicator of whether the current price is sustainable or if the buyer should negotiate down.
The average for the last month is is $5,738
This is a 25%+ increase, let's say around 10% of that can be accounted for via seasonal increases.
The almost certain incoming mayor has pushed for rent stabilization/control/freeze. Let's assume this restricts increases to 10% Y/Y similar to cities like Seattle, this would cause at least a 5% recessionary pressure for housing suppliers.
The big question - is the increase due to greed among the supply (i.e. this pressure is good for the market), due to existing market pressures (i.e. this pressure may cause a wider recession in the housing market), or due to a bubble (i.e. this pressure may pop it, for better or worse)?
NYC has negligible vacancy rates and airbnbs are already illegal. Sounds like a supply problem. The supply problem gets clearer when you realize how quickly the jersey side has grown. It's because NYC has no supply.
I have no proof for this, but lots of influencer types, nepo babies and people with remote jobs moved to NY during covid and didn't leave. NY Metro population never saw a covid dip, has been steadily growing and RTO mandates are probably causing suburbanites to consider moving back into the city. We are seeing price increases from a repressed real estate market that's finally making bank from the supply crunch.
Compare NYC metro area to SF metro area. NYC saw smaller covid drop, larger subsequent pct growth and a much much larger absolute growth rate. Rent control won't fix anything. They need to start approving market-rate housing at a mad rate. Austin is a great reference.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/23083/new-...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/23130/san-...
For those of you who aren't familiar with this Act, NYC has been an outlier in the US where the tenant would pay a broker fee to rent apartments that were listed by a broker. The odd thing about it has been that it's not the tenant who would historically "hire" the broker, but instead the landlord/owner. And the benefit to the landlord/owner is obvious: they didn't need to expend any resources/energy to market the property for lease and then once a tenant was found the tenant would take care of paying for the broker's efforts through a fee that would range from, say, 8% up to 15% or more of the annual lease rate (e.g., $3000 per month apartment minimum fee would be $3k and sometimes a multiple of that if the broker could get away with it). With the FARE Act this practice where the landlord hired the broker and the tenant pays the fee was banned. You may see where this is going...
For some reason, the NYC City Council thought (and still does think because you can't admit a potential mistake) that the landlord was going to now eat the broker's fee without raising the rent to offset that additional cost. So far? Landlords are not eating the fee and instead are raising the rents. And the worst of it is that the broker fee was always a one-time fee meaning that if the tenant stayed in place they wouldn't be paying the fee again upon lease renewal. Now? The tenant is paying the increased rent to offset the landlord having to pay the fee and that is now the baseline of all future rent increases.
Still early days for the FARE Act, but any reasonable person would've understood that landlords would not eat the broker fee and that this would cause an overnight increase in rents, which... it did (literally overnight once the Act was in effect).
It might be unusual in US, but it is a standard thing in Russia: a tenant pays the fee and landlord pays nothing. I always thought it was the same everywhere. However, when selling the property then the seller pays the fee.
As for high prices, isn't it caused by the fact that everybody wants to live there but there is not enough properties for everyone? If the rent in place A is 3 times higher than in place B it means that people want to live in A and whoever lives in B is there only because they cannot afford living in A.
Totally true on high prices. I was only trying to point out that the goal of that FARE Act, or at least a major goal of it, was to keep tenants from having to pay junk broker fees, with the assumption that would lower the overall cost of housing. It might actually be doing the exact opposite, though still too early to tell (only went into effect in June).
Yes. It costs nothing to the landlord in this case. However some landlords prefer to post the ad themselves and do not want to deal with the brokers, as well as some tenants avoid them too.
Like tariffs, all taxes are eventually paid by the customer. But landlords are more capable of applying price pressure on brokers than random renters. It incentivizes landlords to hand out longer leases, which gives renters more security and fewer avenues for eviction. Won't be surprised if a software company (like streeteasy) takes over the ops side of the brokering business and drives the per-sale price waay down. Seems like an obvious startup idea.
Re the startup idea, agree fully. Zumper sort of tried what you're describing on the lease side in NYC. I interacted with them around the time they launched that effort and thought it was a bit rough around the edges (when is it not when you try something new?). Not sure if they're still doing it or how the FARE Act would've impacted them because I don't quite remember how/if they were using the software/marketplace to drive down the broker fee or just trying to capture the fee as-is (I think the former but not sure).
This is all true, but removing the broker fees and replacing it with a rent hike is still better for the market overall, since the broker fees simply artificially dampen liquidity. You only paid them when you moved into a new place, but that meant that if you are stuck with a crappy landlord you might not move out because the marginal cost of moving anywhere else in NYC is much higher.
May be a one off anecdote. But, it's a data point.
Mamdani’s stated policy is to set the y/y increase in rent for already stabilized apartments to 0% as opposed to the 3% average over the past 4 years. And in recent interviews he also has clarified he’s only promising it for the first year to counteract historically high rent increases over the past few years and subsequent years will be addressed like they always are, based on an analysis of the rental market.
Btw, the rent freeze was done at least 3 times in the 2010s with a 0% increase y/y, so this is not even new policy.
Bloomberg is a centi-billionaire with a track record of loving the free market. His mayoral terms were known for fiscal discipline (vs social welfare spending), hard-on-crime stances (vs. abolish police) and a strong focus on data driven outcomes (vs. intent).
Mamdani is a member of the DSA, which has a track record of being anti-business (Amazon HQ2), pro-regulation (making housing expensive) and pro-union (IMO, NYC unions are a cartel keeping housing & transit more expensive than they need to be).
On paper, they might endorse similar policies, but politicians are judged by their track record and immediate association.
Summer inflation is much more than that
Awesome web app overall, would love to have leaseswap on https://superlaun.ch !!
Also, there's no data for Crown Heights North.
Walk a few minutes north from there, and you'll reach hell's kitchen. Much much cheaper.
(no correlation with the show, just ironic)
My tongue in cheek joke was because most of the audience here doesn’t really know NYC history (they should, it’s fascinating) and doesn’t understand that a young quant hedge fund person has no problems paying $10k/mo in rent for a shoebox they’ll never be in. Just to have the NYC address, to be able to work within NYC. Any sane person would look towards Staten Island or Jersey, but even then the rent prices along the transit lines are double what’s available further out.
But I could be wrong and all the history buffs will rebuke me with facts about how commissioners in the 50s did this or that, or that some policy in the 70s created it.
Doesn't this correlate with the steep drop in crime around that same time period?
The West Village is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. In around 2010, it was the most expensive zip code in the country.
That's due to a combination of: old buildings, very little new construction, extremely gentrified neighborhood, and NYU eating up all of the real estate in the neighborhood.
That said, the map is slightly mislabeled: what's labeled as the West Village is actually Greenwich Village, and the West Village is a subset of that. This map labels places as far east as Astor Place as the West Village, which is not correct.
Not sure where creator is getting their neighborhood data from, but if you're reading this a) great job and b) if you can find a more accurate neighborhood source the utility and credibility of what you've created will go up (that's not a knock, but if New Yorkers love one thing it's knowing their city and so as soon as they see data/info that doesn't match the reality on the ground they might bail before giving this a chance).
NYU's on-campus enrollment is also roughly 50% foreign students. I don't have any data about it, but just from experience I've suspected that foreign students are willing and able to pay higher prices for housing.
Just build more. Sure.