After hitting a 10-year low, Brooklyn rents are rising faster than the national average

By Amelia Anthony

Brooklyn rents hit a 10-year low in the first quarter of 2021, but don’t get complacent: With light at the end of our long pandemic tunnel, rents are no longer going down in aggregate and, according to one survey, are on the rise. The pandemic’s downward influence on the borough’s rental market seems to have ended between March and April of this year, according to new reports from StreetEasy and Apartment Guide.

The median rental price in Brooklyn for both March and April remained at $2,400, according to a new survey by StreetEasy. Citywide, the median rent increased marginally between the months—by $4—signaling an end to the pandemic-induced renter’s breather. The borough’s rental inventory is also down 25 percent from its peak in August.

“All in all, it appears that the days of record low rents may be coming to an end. But we’re not on solid ground just yet,” wrote Street Easy economist Nancy Wu on their blog. “The city’s unemployment rate is still high, there are still a massive amount of apartments to choose from, and each renter is working with a specific timeline and new need …This means that city renters can take their time to move, and rents will creep back up slowly.”

At the neighborhood level, there was some fluctuation in median rents between March and April. Red Hook and Fort Green experienced the highest drops in median rent, at 37.5 percent and 29 percent respectively. On the other hand, Manhattan Beach experienced a whopping 54.5 percent increase and Windsor Terrace rents increased 32.7 percent.

Meanwhile, data from Apartment Guide, which looks at average rent price rather than median, and separates by unit type, saw increases in rent across the borough. Studio apartments went up 18 percent from March to an $2,763 average rent. One-bedrooms went up 9 percent from March to $3,493. Nationally, Apartment Guide data shows a slower increase—2 percent in studios and 3 percent in one-bedrooms—between March and April.

Both reports signal the nearing end of the pandemic-induced renter’s haven, over a year after Covid first hit the city.