(Bloomberg) -- Manhattan apartment rents skyrocketed in January, coming close to an all-time high for the month.
The median rent jumped 23% from a year earlier to $3,467, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. That's just shy of the record for January of $3,472, reached in 2020 before the pandemic exodus sent rates sliding.
Now, New Yorkers are flooding back to the city and grabbing whatever deals are left before costs rise even further. January's median rent was just 2.1% below the record for any month in more than a decade of data-keeping by the firms: $3,540, in April 2020.
The leasing frenzy has whittled down a mountain of listings. In January, the supply of available apartments tumbled 83% from a year earlier to 4,316. Landlord concessions, essential to luring tenants during the height of the pandemic, were offered in just 25% of new leases last month -- a near-normal rate for the market.
While rents overall are roughly back to where they were two years ago, the lower and higher ends of the market remain polarized, according to Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. The median rent at doorman buildings is up 6.9% from January 2020, but costs at non-doorman properties, which tend to be cheaper, are still 5% below where they were two years earlier.
That suggests there's “a lot of additional room to rise at the lower half since it hasn't reached parity with pre-pandemic levels,” Miller said. “But most of the upside potential for the high end has probably already occurred.”
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