The average 2br rent for the last 2 years was $4,536 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 ho…
theres alot of wealthy people in NYC and its only increasing. in neighborhoods like west village or soho, the majority of people are not working corporate jobs. they are paying 7.5-20k a month in rent out of their pockets.
> 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. 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,…
Interesting. Is it the case the landlord hires the broker in that situation? Like the landlord hires the broker, the broker lists it and then the tenant pays the broker? One thing that's still true in NYC is if the tenant hires the broker the tenant still pays the broker, but that's a tiny occurrence relative to the broader practice. Totally true on high prices. I was only trying to point out that the goal of that FA…
> Is it the case the landlord hires the broker in that situation? Like the landlord hires the broker, the broker lists it and then the tenant pays the broker?
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.
Thanks for adding context. On the balance, I think it's a good bill. 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 sid…
At least in Manhattan, no one will give you a contract for more than a year - they will want to renegotiate in a year and demand is high enough to not worry about having no tenants. In Europe multi-year contracts are somewhat typical, but never heard of that in NYC. Similarly, very few will do a contract for less than a year. So the one-time broker fee gets amortized over 12 months, but the net effect is a wealth tra…
This is a new phenomenon. I moved places after the FARE act, and for the first time, we were offered a 24 month lease.
May be a one off anecdote. But, it's a data point.
Some of it has to do with the FARE bill making broker fees illegal. That should account for a 5% of the increase. 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…
Just to piggyback some info onto the FARE Act that the NYC City Council passed because I think it's interesting when talking about the second-order effects of some regulations. 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 h…
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.
Thanks for adding context. On the balance, I think it's a good bill. 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 sid…
Appreciate the optimism and I think what you're saying could happen, and I hope it does, but the flip side is the landlords don't exert that pressure, they bake the fees into the rental rate, and so the new reality is a stepped-up market rate caused by the legislation. If the landlords can just pass the fee on as a rent increase there's not really an incentive for them to offer longer leases so it will all come down…
left this comment on another comment in this thread, so copying it here:
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.
I think it’s important to note that this is asking rent, not what people are paying on average. Landlords do tricks to make rental history appear more expensive than it was, and every online posting should be read as aspirational price, not a real one. Listing inflation helps increase price expectations for the future, and has helped drive the crazy rent inflation NYC has seen post covid (exceeding other expensive me…
Realtors pull a similar trick: instead of dropping the price on Zillow (which flags it), they delist and relist at a lower price. Zillow treats it like a new listing, so the price history looks clean. Totally skews market transparency.
The average 2br rent for the last 2 years was $4,536 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 ho…
Certain units in NYC (about 1mm) are always rent stabilized. They’re rent stabilized because that was the agreement the developer made when getting permissions to build the apartments or more likely because they took advantage of tax abatements and benefits that required a certain percentage of rent stabilized apartments. Mamdani’s stated policy is to set the y/y increase in rent for already stabilized apartments to…
That’s all fair context, but rent stabilization as a policy goal has real trade-offs. Freezing rents might offer short-term relief, but long term it disincentivizes new construction.
For most Mamdani policies you can find a closely corresponding Bloomberg policy. The man is not a Molotov-throwing revolutionary.
You still have to explain the elite freakout, if he's just Bloomberg Lite. His tone is important. He's getting people used to the idea that they can ask for these things, and that politicians can run on them without obfuscating, for fear of the always-anti-socialist crowd. He's shifting the Overton window.
Trumpian campaign tactics perhaps, campaigning on populist rhetoric while the actual policies leave a lot of populism to be desired. Can’t say it isn’t effective
I think it’s important to note that this is asking rent, not what people are paying on average. Landlords do tricks to make rental history appear more expensive than it was, and every online posting should be read as aspirational price, not a real one. Listing inflation helps increase price expectations for the future, and has helped drive the crazy rent inflation NYC has seen post covid (exceeding other expensive me…
Realtors pull a similar trick: instead of dropping the price on Zillow (which flags it), they delist and relist at a lower price. Zillow treats it like a new listing, so the price history looks clean. Totally skews market transparency.
Zillow probably has an incentive to not fix this “bug”, because they could easily track prices based on the address.
Do you have API access to the listing platforms or do you use web scraping? Really nice dashboard UI. One bug I noticed, on signing up with google I land on the sign up page again, instead of being redirected to the analytics dashboard.
Awesome web app overall, would love to have leaseswap on https://superlaun.ch !!