Where and what apartment rentals New Yorkers are searching for right now
As the rental market in New York is heating up with summer approaching as well as the city is opening up and putting the pandemic behind, we wanted to share some stats, trends and opportunities coming out from our New York City rental search platform. The data we used to generate our insights was based on April 2021.
Overall, more people are looking to move back or around the city now. In April, we have seen three times as many rental inquiries as in March. Moreover, those inquiries came from more than twice as many people with an average budget of $3,210. This is mostly driven by real growing demand as the summer approaches, people are moving back into the city, and others are looking to take advantage of historical lower rents.
It’s not surprising that in a post pandemic world people would prefer to live alone if they can afford it. As such, 44% of the inquiries were for either studios or 1 Bedrooms. The rest were for shared housing, with 2 bedrooms being the most popular with 37% of the total inquiries. For where people are looking, Manhattan is the most popular borough with 65% of the searches and inquiries; Brooklyn comes next, considered in 35% of the searches, and with 29% of total inquires.
Zooming into the most popular neighborhoods , it’s no surprise that downtown areas like the East Village, Greenwich Village, Soho, Chelsea and West Village are among the top searched. Yet, when it comes to actual inquiries, the Upper East Side, Fidi, and Lower East Side, and BedStuy were among the top 5. This suggests that price, concessions and amenities can drive demand away from one area to another. But, this can also be partly explained by the quality of the listings and inventory within the price range of our users. There is an opportunity for brokers in the ‘in-demand’ areas such as the East Village or Greenwich Village to boost the quality of their listings with better photos, descriptions and accurate details. As for Brooklyn, the most sought out neighborhoods were Williamsburg (considered in 29% of total searches), Greenpoint, Bedstuy, Bushwick and Downtown Brooklyn (all considered 24% of total searches).
We also looked to see if we see any search trends in listing type, amenities or any other features that is searched on our apartment search platform. And here are interesting stats we would like to share.
- Only 15% of the searches specifically looked for ‘No Fee’ listings.
- 20% of searches looked for a pet friendly unit.
- One amenity was at the top of the list of searches. It was a Washer / Dryer or Laundry in the building. 12% of the searches included this amenity much more than any other.
- Surprisingly, only 2% of searches looked for an outdoor space such as a balcony, an outdoor deck, a rooftop or a backyard.
Have a question or want to learn more? Feel free to reach out. You can also connect with us on Twitter (@diggzny), where we will share other interesting stats relating to the rental search data.
If you are looking for an apartment in New York, make sure to check our NYC Apartment Search platform on Diggz.