It is a well known fact that the price of living in New York is no cheap endeavor; according to almost every online “Most Expensive Cities in the U.S.” ranking list. However, does the electric lifestyle of the City That Never Sleeps, and the charm of upstate New York’s quaint towns, and picturesque landscapes justify these prices?
That’s for you to decide, but according to a recent data report published by Zumper, the innovative home rental website that seeks to “empower the renter with data,” of the 12 cities they analyzed in the New York Metro area, there has been a significant shift in rent over the last year, since 2021, a year with rent prices that Zumper described as “rising at an alarming rate.”
The report includes data obtained by Zumper analysts who monitored the active listings of one-bedroom apartments over the last month, to identify the most and least expensive cities, as well as the cities with the fastest growing rents.
“We analyze cities where we have listings on our platform, which is practically every city in the country,” said Zumper Data Journalist Jeff Andrews, and “we analyze one-bedrooms because they are the most responsive in terms of rent because people who live in one-bedrooms move more often.”
To determine the median asking rents, each listing was aggregated by city, meaning that each of the collected rents were separated into groups in order to obtain the data set’s middle rent price.
On Jan. 11, Zumper researchers concluded that the top three most expensive markets for one-bedrooms started with New York City, ranked at number 1 with the median price at $3,190, then Hoboken in second place, with rent at $2,730, and Fort Lee in third place, with rent at $2,520.
On the latter end of the rent spectrum, Zumper found that the three least expensive cities for one bedrooms were West New York with rent at $1,600, Union City at $1,400 —due to a recent rent drop of 1.4%— and Newark claiming the title of the most affordable city with rent at $1,350.
“New York City’s rent rollercoaster has been something to behold,” said Andrews, referring to the fluctuating rent prices from over the last year.
Utilizing the already collected data, Zumper was also able to examine the difference in one-bedroom rent costs, calculating the fastest growing rent by year and by month.
According to the statistics, the cities that exhibited the fastest increase in rent since this time last year, began with New York City in first place, which showed an increase of approximately 32.4%, and similar to Zumper’s “Most Expensive Market” rankings, Hoboken followed in second place, with a rent growth of 21.3%, and Jersey City in third place with a rent jump of 12%.
Zumper’s rankings of cities with the quickest increase in rent by year are much different than the rankings of cities by month. In this data set, Long Beach is placed at number one, with the largest monthly rental growth rate of 5.2%, then Jersey City in second place with a rent jump of 5.1%, and Hoboken in third with a rise of 5%.
Due to the “unusually low” vacancy rate of Manhattan apartments, which according to Zumper is below 2%, rent prices are expected to continue to grow, just not at the same rate that it did in 2021.
“We expect a more ‘normal’ year,” said Andrews, “where economic fundamentals drive rent, as opposed to the pandemic-related migration patterns that have driven rent in NYC over the last two years.”
Click here to read the full report.
