Apartment rentals New York with Manhattan Rental Market

Living room at a luxury apartment at 57 Reade Street.

Zumper's February’s Rental Report has been released, and its data revealed New York City’s rental market is still second only to San Francisco in its fierce competitiveness and monthly rental price. While 1- and 2-bedrooms are up 7.3 and 3.1 percent, respectively, from last year, February was a slightly less expensive month than January, showing a 1.8 decrease for 1-bedrooms and a 2.4 percent fall for 2-bedrooms.

It seems that in Manhattan, a new tall, glassy building appears to be racing towards the sky every minute. While this isn’t exactly the case, the planning and production rate of these buildings does occur at a steady pace.

Last Thursday, Elliman released their monthly rentals report, and as expected, rents increased across the board. Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are seeing greater market competition for studios, one-, and two-bedrooms, which pushed rents higher.

Rent prices are on the rise again, with the median rent up 4.1 percent ($4,093) compared to last year, writes Curbed. Jonathan Miller, compiler of Elliman Report has found that the prices for smaller apartments are now rising faster than the top of the market. In Manhattan, the median price for studios and one-bedrooms is $2,270 - that’s 11 percent up from last year, the highest point in seven years! Brooklyn and Queens rent rates are also going up, though at a much steadier rate. The real question is: why are smaller apartment rents going up?

Zillow calculated the average rents in the nation’s biggest metropolitan markets for 2014, and the NYC area doesn’t even rank in the highest five (pretty not bad for the country's most livable city).  As has been reported previously, California rents topped the list, occupying four out of the top five spots.  Curiously, San Francisco’s average ($1,598), which in previous months had beat out New York’s ($1,228), was actually the second highest — the region with the highest rents was actually San Jose, which was calculated to have an average monthly rent of $1,807.