One more year of not having to move in with your parents!
Some possibly good news has arrived on the wave of this weird, foggy cold front. According to a just-released Elliman Report, Brooklyn’s median rents have leveled off since the beginning of this year. This stands in contrast to our friends in Manhattan, whose median rents have risen by 1.6% in the past month alone. So, hey, remember that thing we said back in winter about Manhattan’s market dying and how we idly speculated about whether Brooklyn is officially more expensive than Manhattan? Yeah, uh, scratch that.
In February (or have you forcibly rid yourself of memories from last winter?), we were very, very close to The Rent-pocalypse, aka, a scenario in which rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn would theoretically meet, but according to Jonathan Miller, the guy who compiled the Elliman Report, “The easing of rental prices in Manhattan at the end of 2013 was due to the surge in sales volume that effectively poached the rental market,” he told Curbed. “Consumers were concerned with the potential of rising rates so all the fence-sitters jumped in. Plus all the pent-up demand leading up to the fiscal cliff was released after the world didn’t end.”
The situation we’re looking at now is pretty much what you’d call normal, or, at least, what passes for normal when it comes to New York real estate. What that means is Manhattan rents are rising while vacancy is at its lowest since last June. And even though Brooklyn rents continue to rise on a year-by-year basis (quite drastically, we may add, with an 8.6% jump from last year compared with Manhattan’s 3.1%), they’ve leveled off in the past few months, while remaining, you know, prohibitively high in most places.
Of course, rent fluctuations vary with location and apartment size. According to the report, there’s been especially steep rent hikes for studios (up 25.3% from last year) and one-bedrooms (up 17%), while two- and three-bedrooms have increased 7.7% and decreased 2.5%, respectively. Translation: you’ll be living with roommates forever.
As for location, can you guess which Brooklyn neighborhoods have seen the biggest increases over the past few years? Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Bay Ridge and DoBro.
(If you thought we weren’t going to include a cool chart here, you have a lot to learn about the Internet.)
Follow Rebecca Jennings on Twitter @rebexxxxa
