New York City rents reached ‘record highs’ in August

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NYC rents are rising at the fastest rate in three years

New York City’s rental market may be fickle, but the overall trend of the past few years is that rents just keeps going up—and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. In fact, according to a new StreetEasy report, rents are now rising “at their fastest pace since 2016,” with record high figures being recorded in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Numbers-wise, StreetEasy found that rents in Manhattan have hit a whopping $3,309/month, with median rents in many of its neighborhoods at or above $3,000/month. That’s the largest year-over-year increase since 2016—and unfortunately for renters, landlords are also offering fewer concessions. In Brooklyn and Queens, rents are lower—$2,695/month and $2,198/month, respectively—but those numbers still represent huge year-over-year jumps, increasing 3.5 percent in both boroughs.

Sales, meanwhile, are slumping, with prices falling by nearly five percent in Manhattan (though the median is still an absurdly high $1.098 million).

A Bronx megaproject moves closer to completion

La Central, a massive, nearly 1,000-unit megaproject in the South Bronx, is one step closer to being realized. The project’s developers—a group that includes Hudson Companies, BRP Companies, ELH-TKC LLC, Breaking Ground, and Comunilife—announced that two of the project’s five buildings have now topped out. Those buildings include nearly 500 affordable apartments, ground-floor retail, a rooftop urban farm, and a new YMCA facility.

The whole shebang has been in the works for several years, and the first phase—a supportive housing building with 161 apartments—will open next month. The two buildings that topped out this month should open by 2020. When all is said and done—that’ll be by 2023—the entire project, designed by FXCollaborative, will have close to 1,000 affordable units, available to New Yorkers making between 30 and 100 percent of the area median income.

And in other news…

• What’s happening to the waterfront site in Queens that was once earmarked for Amazon’s HQ2 campus? Politico has the scoop.
• This year’s corn maze at the Queens County Farm Museum is in the shape of the Unisphere, the World’s Fair landmark in Queens—and it opens this Saturday.
• The city released its annual management report, which looks at how the various agencies have performed over the past year. The verdict? The city is “safer and more equitable,” according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.
• Speaking of hizzoner, he may not drop out of the presidential race if he doesn’t qualify for the next round of debates.
• Gothamist visits a Lower East Side housing complex where facial recognition technology—currently under fire by lawmakers—has been in use for more than five years.
• Public transit’s public enemy No. 1, Arthur Schwartz, is representing Queens businesses that are suing to undo a bus lane on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood—but a judge blocked their request for a temporary restraining order.
• And finally, Daily News transit reporter Clayton Guse recently put out a call for transit-themed songs on Twitter. What’s your favorite?