Report: Brooklyn rents are the lowest they’ve been in a decade

By Jake Samieske

If there’s just one upside to a global pandemic, it might be the downward pressure on New York rents: The median asking price for rent has sunk to its lowest point in a decade: Brooklyn’s median asking price during the first quarter of the year was $2,390, its lowest since 2011, real estate database StreetEasy reported Friday.

The decrease in rent is due to largely unprecedented housing availability around the city, with StreetEasy also reporting that “In the first quarter, rental inventory in Manhattan and Brooklyn was more than twice as high as it was in Q1 2020. And Queens inventory was 97 percent higher.”

Carroll Gardens experienced the most dramatic price drop at 24.2 percent, while Williamsburg and Greenpoint are offering the cheapest rents in over a decade, according to Brooklyn Reader. Meanwhile, Brownsville saw no change in rent prices whatsoever.

StreetEasy economist Nancy Yu expects rental activity to increase in the summer as vaccination efforts continue to roll out, but adds that renters can be patient about capitalizing on cheaper prices as the city takes time to rebound:

“The rentals market does react to economic activity much more quickly than the sales market. As the city continues to recover, competition will slowly start to pick up.”

StreetEasy’s report offers encouraging news to renters seeking to return to the borough and for newcomers—and suggests that while the city may have been battered, it was never beaten.