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Remember the halcyon days of 2020, when you could score a steal in Greenpoint because your neighbor had fled to the Catskills? Yeah, about that: Those deals are now the stuff of urban legend. As New York roared back from the pandemic, a new report from Bloomberg shows that landlords clawed back lost revenue and rents in the city’s most desirable ZIP codes didn’t just bounce—they skyrocketed.
Take Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the industrial-meets-artsy vibe used to come with a modest price tag. Since 2020, asking rents there have jumped a jaw-dropping 60-percent. Across the river in Chelsea, it’s a similar story. A 54-percent surge has left even six-figure earners sweating their monthly Venmo transfers. Soho, never exactly a bargain, notched a 60-percent rise too, while Tribeca climbed 58-percent. Dumbo’s picture-perfect waterfront? Up 49-percent. And Long Island City, where gleaming towers sprouted almost overnight, saw a 47-percent spike.
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In Manhattan overall, the median rent hit $4,722 this summer, according to StreetEasy data. That number makes the so-called “one-third rule” of budgeting laughably quaint: At least 65,000 New York households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 are now shelling out a third or more of their gross income just to keep a roof overhead.
These aren’t starving artists—we’re talking finance bros, software engineers, even high-earning illustrators—wondering if New York living is still worth the grind.
A perfect storm of factors is driving the pain. Pandemic-era rent dips lured people back, luxury development flooded certain neighborhoods, and a historically tight housing market fueled bidding wars. The result is that even “HENRYs” (high earners, not rich yet) are trapped in a rental cycle that leaves little room for savings or sanity.
And renters aren’t just grumbling in group chats. This year, entire swaths of Greenpoint, Tribeca, and Long Island City voted overwhelmingly for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist mayoral candidate promising rent freezes. That should tell you just how far the affordability crisis has spread.
If you snagged a $2,000 one-bedroom in 2021, consider yourself a unicorn. For the rest of us, the days of “cheap” leases in New York’s hottest neighborhoods are long gone. The question now is less “where can I afford?” and more “who do I have to bribe to keep my roommate from moving out?”