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Comment by cpascal | Hacker News Reader

Anyone seeing a similar dip in the NYC metropolitan area? I've been casually watching rents and not seeing much of a dip. It seems that there are less units available as well, so perhaps that is counterbalancing a decrease in demand.

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Streeteasy data [0] shows a drop in listings but no fall in asking rents. However there has been a sharp rise in concessions - i.e. free month upon new lease signing. My guess is landlords are currently keeping apartments off the market rather lock in lower rents, and when they do need to move a unit they use concessions since they look better from an accounting basis. I think eventually we will see a fall in gross rents but it may take longer than expected.

[0] - https://streeteasy.com/blog/data-dashboard

Now that I think about it, you are right about there being more concessions. You are seeing a lot of "2-3 months free" listings now.

Even before the pandemic it felt like 50% of places on Streeteasy had been listed with net effective rents in recent years... the current situation is probably just accelerating a trend that was already well underway.

Doesn't mean I'm not kicking myself for signing a 2-year lease on a place last fall, though. I love my apartment, I've been here 2 years already, and its a fair price, but I'm basically 8 months into a 24 month lease and could probably save almost 10k over the next 16 months if I had the option of breaking the lease and moving.

I just asked the same thing below/above. I live in NYC but am currently outside the city and assume we must see a 15% decrease also.

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